Attention modulates the gating of primary somatosensory oscillations Abstract   Sensory gating (SG) is a wellstudied phenomenon in which neural responses are reduced to identical stimuli presented in succession, and is thought to represent the functional inhibition of primary sensory information that is redundant in nature. SG is traditionally considered preattentive, but little is known about the effects of attentional state on this process. In this study, we investigate the impact of directed attention on somatosensory SG using magnetoencephalography. Healthy young adults (nxc2xa0xe2x80x8bxc2xa0xe2x80x8b26) performed a novel somatovisual pairedpulse oddball paradigm, in which attention was directed towards or away from pairedpulse stimulation of the left median nerve. We observed a robust evoked (i.e., phaselocked) somatosensory response in the time domain, and three stereotyped oscillatory responses in the timefrequency domain including an early theta response (4xe2x80x938xc2xa0xe2x80x8bHz), and later alpha (8xe2x80x9314xc2xa0xe2x80x8bHz) and beta (20xe2x80x9326xc2xa0xe2x80x8bHz) responses across attentional states. The amplitudes of the evoked response and the theta and beta oscillations were gated for the second stimulus, however, only the gating of the oscillatory responses was altered by attention. Specifically, directing attention to the somatosensory domain enhanced SG of the early theta response, while reducing SG of the later alpha and beta responses. Further, prefrontal alphaband coherence with the primary somatosensory cortex was greater when attention was directed towards the somatosensory domain, supporting a frontal modulatory effect on the alpha response in primary somatosensory regions. These findings highlight the dynamic effects of attentional modulation on somatosensory processing, and the importance of considering attentional state in studies of SG.

Early attentional processes distinguish selective from global motor inhibitory control: an electrical neuroimaging study The rapid stopping of specific parts of movements is frequently required in daily life. Yet, whether selective inhibitory control of movements is mediated by a specific neural pathway or by the combination between a global stopping of all ongoing motor activity followed by the reinitiation of taskrelevant movements remains unclear. To address this question, we analyzed electrical neuroimaging responses to global vs selective inhibition stimuli presented during a GoNoGo task. Participants had to respond as fast as possible with their two hands to Go stimuli and to withhold the response from the two hands (global inhibition conditions, GNG) or from only one hand (selective inhibition, SNG) when specific NoGo stimuli were presented. Behaviorally, we replicated previous evidence for slower response times in the SNG than in the Go condition. Electrophysiologically, there were two distinct phases of eventrelated potentials modulations between the GNG and the SNG conditions. At 110150ms poststimulus onset, there was a difference in the strength of the electric field without concomitant topographic modulation, indicating the differential engagement of statistically indistinguishable configurations of neural generators for selective and global inhibitory control. At 150200ms, there was a change in the electric field topography, indicating the engagement of distinct configurations of neural generators. Source estimations localized these effects within bilateral temporooccipital and posterior parietal regions and within a parietocentral network, respectively. Our results suggest that while both types of motor inhibitory control depend on global stopping mechanisms, selective and global inhibition still differ quantitatively at early attentionrelated processing phases.