Heading Direction Tracks Internally Directed Selective Attention in Visual Working Memory

Jude L. Thom; Anna C. Nobre; Freek van Ede; Dejan Draschkow

doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01976

Heading Direction Tracks Internally Directed Selective Attention in Visual Working Memory

Jude L. Thom, Anna C. Nobre, Freek van Ede, Dejan Draschkow

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

We shift our gaze even when we orient attention internally to visual representations in working memory. Here, we show the bodily orienting response associated with internal selective attention is widespread as it also includes the head. In three virtual reality experiments, participants remembered 2 visual items. After a working memory delay, a central color cue indicated which item needed to be reproduced from memory. After the cue, head movements became biased in the direction of the memorized location of the cued memory item-despite there being no items to orient toward in the external environment. The heading-direction bias had a distinct temporal profile from the gaze bias. Our findings reveal that directing attention within the spatial layout of visual working memory bears a strong relation to the overt head orienting response we engage when directing attention to sensory information in the external environment. The heading-direction bias further demonstrates common neural circuitry is engaged during external and internal orienting of attention.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	856-868
Number of pages	13
Journal	Journal of cognitive neuroscience
Volume	35
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01976
Publication status	Published - 1 May 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Funding

This research was funded by a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (https://dx.doi.org/10.13039 /100010269), grant number: 104571/Z/14/Z, and a James S. McDonnell Foundation Understanding Human Cognition Collaborative Award, grant number: 220020448 to A. C. N., an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council (https://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010663), grant number: 850636 to F. v. E., and by the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre. The Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging is supported by core funding from the Wellcome Trust (https://dx.doi.org/10.13039 /100010269), grant number: 203139/Z/16/Z. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

Funders	Funder number
James S. McDonnell Foundation	220020448
Wellcome Trust	104571/Z/14/Z, https://dx.doi.org/10.13039 /100010269
European Research Council	850636
NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre	203139/Z/16/Z.

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title = "Heading Direction Tracks Internally Directed Selective Attention in Visual Working Memory",

abstract = "We shift our gaze even when we orient attention internally to visual representations in working memory. Here, we show the bodily orienting response associated with internal selective attention is widespread as it also includes the head. In three virtual reality experiments, participants remembered 2 visual items. After a working memory delay, a central color cue indicated which item needed to be reproduced from memory. After the cue, head movements became biased in the direction of the memorized location of the cued memory item-despite there being no items to orient toward in the external environment. The heading-direction bias had a distinct temporal profile from the gaze bias. Our findings reveal that directing attention within the spatial layout of visual working memory bears a strong relation to the overt head orienting response we engage when directing attention to sensory information in the external environment. The heading-direction bias further demonstrates common neural circuitry is engaged during external and internal orienting of attention.",

author = "Thom, {Jude L.} and Nobre, {Anna C.} and {van Ede}, Freek and Dejan Draschkow",

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Heading Direction Tracks Internally Directed Selective Attention in Visual Working Memory

Abstract

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