Serial order working memory and spatial attention: an EEG study

Event Abstract Back to Event Serial order working memory and spatial attention: an EEG study Vesal Rasoulzadeh1*, Muhammet I. Sahan1, Elger Abrahamse2, Jean-Philippe Van Dijck1* and Wim Fias1 1 Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium 2 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Spain The first empirical evidence for the involvement of spatial attention in serial order working memory (WM) was provided by van Dijck et al, 2013. They reported that while maintaining a sequence of four digits in WM, selection of the relevant information from the sequence is driven by an attentional search across an internal mental space. In this study, based on the available EEG data from van Dijck et al. 2013’s experiment, we addressed the neural indication of the induced shifts of attention in response to the retrieval of the items stored in serial order WM. Specifically, the induced rightward attentional shift in response to selection of the latest item compared to the earliest item in the sequence was inspected in brain signals. Lateralized ERP components, namely, EDAN and ADAN (Figures 1 and 2) and alpha activity (responsible for inhibition of the irrelevant information) were found to accommodate trademarks of the related visuospatial shifts of attention. Moreover, lateralized alpha activity as the neural measure of the covert shift of attention was found to be correlated with the behavioral measure of the attentional shift in mental space (Figure 3). In sum, we provide neural evidence for the involvement of visuospatial attention in serial order WM in the verbal domain. Our findings substantiate the crossover processes between visuospatial and verbal domains in WM. This challenges the classical models of WM where separate components are allocated for visuospatial and verbal domains. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 References van Dijck, J. P., Abrahamse, E. L., Majerus, S., & Fias, W. (2013). Spatial attention interacts with serial-order retrieval from verbal working memory. Psychological Science, 24(9), 1854-1859. Keywords: Serial order working memory, visuospatial attention, EEG, ERPs (EDAN, ADAN), Alpha oscillations Conference: 13th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience , Brussels, Belgium, 24 May - 24 May, 2019. Presentation Type: Poster presentation Topic: Behavioral/Systems Neuroscience Citation: Rasoulzadeh V, Sahan MI, Abrahamse E, Van Dijck J and Fias W (2019). Serial order working memory and spatial attention: an EEG study. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 13th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2019.96.00048 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 24 Apr 2019; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019. * Correspondence: Mx. Vesal Rasoulzadeh, Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, East Flanders, 9000, Belgium, vesal.rasoulzadeh@ugent.be Dr. Jean-Philippe Van Dijck, Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, East Flanders, 9000, Belgium, JeanPhilippe.vanDijck@UGent.be Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Vesal Rasoulzadeh Muhammet I Sahan Elger Abrahamse Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Wim Fias Google Vesal Rasoulzadeh Muhammet I Sahan Elger Abrahamse Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Wim Fias Google Scholar Vesal Rasoulzadeh Muhammet I Sahan Elger Abrahamse Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Wim Fias PubMed Vesal Rasoulzadeh Muhammet I Sahan Elger Abrahamse Jean-Philippe Van Dijck Wim Fias Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.