Abstract
Virtually all behavioral and neurophysiological studies have shown that sustained (endogenous, conceptually driven) attention enhances perception. But can this enhancement be held indefinitely? We assessed the time course of attention's effects on contrast sensitivity, reasoning that if attention does indeed boost stimulus strength, the strengthened representation could result in stronger adaptation over time. We found that attention initially enhances contrast sensitivity, but that over time sustained attention can actually impair sensitivity to an attended stimulus.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1243-1245 |
Number of pages | 3 |
Journal | Nature Neuroscience |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2006 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience