Attention
2022-03-04: Default Mode Network reference:
Attention #
- Attention is the ability to laser focus on a single point, while alertness is the ability to be perceptive to all potential stimuli.
- For Dopamine to increase attention, GABA must suppress attention to everything else, and Acetylcholine has you keep paying attention to it - increases the signal-to-noise ratio, so to say.
- DA for executive, ACh for system-alerting, and noradrenaline for orienting.
A Neural Model of Mind Wandering (, 2016) #
- It is not entirely task-negative, but this network is reliably activated when no task is at hand.
- Exploration-exploitation: more of a marketing/business term, lol. Respectively, the investigation of new behavioral patterns vs an existing goal. Transitions between these states is mediated by LC-NE.
- High neural gain is communication of only strongly functionally-connected neurons, with weak connections blocked, or when neural gain is low, strong connections are attenuated. The high neural gain mode is actually the one that facilitates exploration due to its higher “density” leading to excess LC-NE activity.
- But of course, too little activity in this narrower area also leads to mind-wandering.
- Locus Coeruleus-Noradrenaline tonic/phases responses have an inverse relationship. LC is difficult to image so pupil diameter is used as a proxy of its activation, and what do you know tonic pupil diameter/decrease in phasic response has been shown to precede mind wandering-related errors, and implicated in stronger functional connectivity.
- The DMN consists of the dorsal medial and Medial Temporal Lobe subsystems, connected by the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex.
This is all corroborating excessive BDNF/NGF impairing concentration. The epic ‘brain interconnectivity’!!1!!1 reddit shit clearly has its shadow here.
AN INTEGRATIVE THEORY OF LOCUS COERULEUS-NOREPINEPHRINE FUNCTION: Adaptive Gain and Optimal Performance (2005) #
- When utility in the task wanes, LC neurons exhibit a tonic activity mode, associated with disengagement from the current task and a search for alternative behaviors (exploration).
- Noradrenaline augments the throughput of signals in sensory brain areas
- Frontal structures such as the Orbitofrontal Cortex and Anterior Cingulate Cortex provide input of evaluation of task utility