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Content archived on 2024-06-18

Competition between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms of auditory attention: neurophysiological and physiopathological mechanisms of distractibility

Objective

Attention is the brain function by which we, voluntarily or not, improve the processing of specific information in our environment while other information is disregarded. In principle, the entry of information to the limited-capacity system is controlled by two types of processes: top-down (TD) and bottom-up (BU) processes. TD attention enables the good performance of an on-going task by selecting the relevant information. One’s attention can also be involuntarily captured by an unexpected salient stimulus and thus diverted from the previously on-going task. This BU form of attention is necessary to be aware of potentially important events that are nonetheless irrelevant to the on-going task (e.g. fire alarm), and is commonly referred as distractibility. A good balance between BU and TD mechanisms is thus crucial to be task-efficient while being aware of our surrounding environment.
This precarious balance is often affected in neurological and psychiatric disorders (e.g. attention-deficit hyperactivity or bipolar disorder, autism). Lack of distractibility points to the dominance of TD attention, whereas enhanced distractibility could be due to either reduced efficiency of TD mechanisms, or enhanced triggering of BU attentional capture. Despite the obvious importance of distractibility in assessing the patients’ neurological status, no generally accepted index of it has emerged in clinical practice. Currently available tests of attention focus on top-down mechanisms of attention and fail to provide an indication of any alteration in BU attentional capture.
Therefore, this project aims at proposing a new paradigm to assess both BU and TD attention mechanisms, at the same time. At a basic level, this paradigm will provide crucial information on how these mechanisms compete in the healthy brain. On the clinical side, the better understanding of the physiopathological mechanisms of BU and TD attention will permit the optimization of a new distractibility test.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-CIG - Support for training and career development of researcher (CIG)

Coordinator

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE
EU contribution
€ 100 000,00
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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