2019 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience

13-16 September 2019    Berlin, Germany

Technical Program

Paper Detail

Paper: PS-2B.40
Session: Poster Session 2B
Location: H Fläche 1.OG
Session Time: Sunday, September 15, 17:15 - 20:15
Presentation Time:Sunday, September 15, 17:15 - 20:15
Presentation: Poster
Publication: 2019 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, 13-16 September 2019, Berlin, Germany
Paper Title: Neural Measures of Inter- vs Intra-individual Differences in Sustained Attention
Manuscript:  Click here to view manuscript
License: Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32470/CCN.2019.1400-0
Authors: David Rothlein, Joseph DeGutis, Michael Esterman, VA Boston Healthcare System, United States
Abstract: Sustaining attention to a task results in variability due to intra-individual fluctuations in performance and inter-individual differences in overall task ability. What are the neural and cognitive bases of this variability? Attention is thought to play a central role by facilitating the representation and communication of stimulus information within and across sensory, attentional, and executive networks. Here we ask two questions: (a) Does performance variability correspond to changes in the fidelity and/or connectivity of stimulus representations? and (b) Do intra- and inter-individual differences correspond to the same underlying neural changes? Using a large fMRI dataset (N = 227; 511 task runs) from multiple studies we used Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) to quantify the representational fidelity (RF) and representational connectivity (RC) of stimulus representations during the gradual onset Continuous Performance Task (gradCPT) and related these neural variables to intra- and inter-individual differences in performance. We found increased RF and RC related to better performance within and across a network of brain regions in the visual, frontal, and parietal cortices. Interestingly, inter-individual differences involved visual cortex while intra-individual differences involved parietal and frontal regions, suggesting differential neurocognitive mechanisms underlying inter- and intra-individual variability in sustaining attention.