Exploring the Shared and Distinct Neural Substrates Associated with Lapses of Auditory and Visual Sustained Attention

Abstract

The ability to sustain your attention or remain alert is becoming increasingly important in everyday life, ranging from driving a car and remaining alert to when the car in front brakes, to work environments that require employees to continuously attend and monitor automated systems for long periods of time. However, our ability to sustain attention can fluctuate over time, and lapses of sustained attention can have serious consequences, such as drops in attention leading to road accidents. Also, attentional deficits are central to a number of psychiatric disorders, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia. As such, there is growing scientific and practical importance in having the ability to predict lapses of sustained attention before the lapse occurs using signals from the brain. Previous research has shown that lapses in visual sustained attention is associated with reduced frontal P3 amplitudes before a lapse occurs. Researchers have suggested these findings indicate that the frontal P3 is a neural mechanism that reflects endogenous (topdown/higher order) attentional processing that can track the timing structure of the task. However, no study to date has examined the brain signals that may show predictive characteristics of lapses in auditory sustained attention. This study examined the electrical signals from the brain that may predict lapses of auditory and visual sustained attention. Specifically, this study examined whether lapses of auditory sustained attention were associated with reductions in frontal P3 amplitudes before the lapses has occurred, as has been consistently shown with visual sustained attention. The present study provides the first evidence to show both lapses of auditory and visual sustained attention are associated with reduced frontal P3 amplitudes before the lapse occurs. Also, our findings show that exogenous (stimulus-driven) attentional processes do not support auditory sustained attention during the CTET, as has been observed during the visual CTET. These findings provide support to the interpretations that the frontal P3 is an endogenous (higher order) attentional mechanism, and lapses of sustained attention during a CTET paradigm only affects endogenous (higher order) attentional processing. The theoretical considerations of the current findings are discussed in regard to previous cognitive theories of the frontal P3. Future research should further examine the electrical activity that could predict lapses of auditory sustained attention using the CTET, starting with alpha oscillations.