Papers by Jose van Velzen
Journal of Psychophysiology, 2005
We investigated the performance on a selective attention task in two groups of 8-to 12-year-old h... more We investigated the performance on a selective attention task in two groups of 8-to 12-year-old healthy children being characterized as extraverted and introverted, respectively. During task performance EEG-activity was recorded to investigate differential effects on a specific selection-related potential, the N2b. Cardiac activity was recorded continuously before, during and after task performance. Spectral energy was computed for three distinguishable frequency bands corresponding with a low (LF), mid-(MF), and high-frequency (HF) component in heart rate variability (HRV). The extraverted children were found to show greater perceptual sensitivity in response to irrelevant information. They also exhibited a greater N2b-component while showing significantly greater decreases in, particularly, the LF-and MF-power of HRV during task performance as compared to baseline periods. The magnitude of the N2b and the task-related decreases in LF-power of HRV were found to correlate significantly with the degree of extraversion and task performance, as well as with each other. The findings are discussed in the light of how selective attention and changes in physiological state may be related to the children's temperament.
Cognitive Brain Research, May 1, 2005
Recent evidence indicates that the spatial direction of endogenous covert spatial attention in on... more Recent evidence indicates that the spatial direction of endogenous covert spatial attention in one sensory modality can crossmodally influence early processing of stimuli in a different modality. However, spatial locations are initially coded according to different frames of reference for different modalities (e.g., body-centered for touch versus retinocentric vision) and postural changes (e.g., gaze shifts) will realign these. Here, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how the direction of endogenous tactile attention affects sensory-specific visual ERP components. Critically, by manipulating direction of gaze, we were able to test whether any crossmodal effects depend on visual and tactile projections to a common hemisphere, on common locations in external space, or on some combination of the two. We found that both P1 and N1 visual components were modulated according to the direction of endogenous tactile attention. While the P1 crossmodal effect followed purely hemispheric constraints, the attentional modulation of N1 appeared to combine both anatomical and external spatial constraints.
Cognitive Processing, Jul 22, 2006
Human Movement Science, Aug 1, 2019
Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting motor coord... more Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting motor coordination in children and adults. Here, EEG signals elicited by visual and tactile stimuli were recorded while adult participants with and without probable DCD (pDCD) performed a motor task. The task cued reaching movements towards a location in visible peripersonal space as well as an area of unseen personal space. Event-related potentials elicited by visual and tactile stimuli revealed that visual processing was strongly affected by movement preparation in the pDCD group, even more than in controls. However, in contrast to the controls, tactile processing in unseen space was unaffected by movement preparation in the pDCD group. The selective use of sensory information from vision and proprioception is fundamental for the adaptive control of movements, and these findings suggest that this is impaired in DCD. Additionally, the pDCD group showed attenuated motor rhythms (beta: 13-30Hz) over sensorimotor regions following cues to prepare movements towards unseen personal space. The results reveal that individuals with pDCD exhibit differences in the neural mechanisms of spatial selection and action preparation compared to controls, which may underpin the sustained difficulties they experience. These findings provide new insights into the neural mechanisms potentially disrupted in this highly prevalent disorder.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Feb 1, 2019
The human brain recruits similar brain regions when a state is experienced (e.g., touch, pain, ac... more The human brain recruits similar brain regions when a state is experienced (e.g., touch, pain, actions) and when that state is passively observed in other individuals. In adults, seeing other people being touched activates similar brain areas as when we experience touch ourselves. Here we show that already by four months of age, cortical responses to tactile stimulation are modulated by visual information specifying another person being touched. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) in 4-month-old infants while they were presented with brief vibrotactile stimuli to the hands. At the same time that the tactile stimuli were presented the infants observed another person's hand being touched by a soft paintbrush or approached by the paintbrush which then touched the surface next to their hand. A prominent positive peak in SEPs contralateral to the site of tactile stimulation around 130 ms after the tactile stimulus onset was of a significantly larger amplitude for the "Surface" trials than for the "Hand" trials. These findings indicate that, even at four months of age, somatosensory cortex is not only involved in the personal experience of touch but can also be vicariously recruited by seeing other people being touched.
Psychophysiology, May 1, 2009
We investigated how covert response preparation is modulated by the instructed cognitive context ... more We investigated how covert response preparation is modulated by the instructed cognitive context of a motor task. Participants prepared left-hand or right-hand movements towards or away from the body midline, as indicated by a response cue (S1) presented prior to a Go-Nogo stimulus (S2). Different participants were instructed that response cues specified the response hand or movement direction, respectively. This emphasis on effector versus movement direction selection modulated lateralised ERP components triggered during the S1-S2 interval. Attention shifts during movement preparation were assessed by measuring ERPs to irrelevant visual probes. Enhanced N1 components were found for probes near the effector when effector selection was emphasized, but for probes near the movement target location when movement direction selection was emphasized. Results demonstrate strong top-down contextual biases on motor control and on the locus of spatial attention during response preparation.
Clinical Neurophysiology, May 1, 2006
Objective: We investigated whether covert unimanual response preparation triggers attention shift... more Objective: We investigated whether covert unimanual response preparation triggers attention shifts, as postulated by the premotor theory of attention, and whether these result in spatially specific modulations of visual and auditory processing. Methods: Visual response cues instructed participants to prepare to lift their left or right index finger in response to a subsequent target stimulus. Irrelevant visual or auditory probes were delivered to the left or right hand during the response preparation interval. ERPs were measured time-locked to cue onset, and time-locked to probe stimulus onset. Results: Lateralised ERP components triggered during covert response preparation (ADAN, LDAP) were similar to components previously found during attention shifts. N1 components were enhanced to visual probes delivered adjacent to the cued response relative to those delivered to the opposite hand. Auditory probe ERPs were unaffected by manual response preparation. Conclusions: Shifts of spatial attention that are triggered during covert unimanual response preparation result in spatially specific modulations of visual but not auditory processing. Significance: Results support the claim of the premotor theory that the preparation of manual responses is associated with attention shifts. However, such shifts are not based on purely supramodal processes, as they result in a modality-specific pattern of sensory modulations.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Mar 1, 2004
& Previous ERP studies have uncovered cross-modal interactions in endogenous spatial attention. D... more & Previous ERP studies have uncovered cross-modal interactions in endogenous spatial attention. Directing attention to one side to judge stimuli from one particular modality can modulate early modality-specific ERP components not only for that modality, but also for other currently irrelevant modalities. However, past studies could not determine whether the spatial focus of attention in the task-irrelevant secondary modality was similar to the primary modality, or was instead diffuse across one hemifield. Here, auditory or visual stimuli could appear at any one of four locations (two on each side). In different blocks, subjects judged stimuli at only one of these four locations, for an auditory (Experiment 1) or visual (Experiment 2) task. Early attentional modulations of visual and auditory ERPs were found for stimuli at the currently relevant location, compared with those at the irrelevant location within the same hemifield, thus demonstrating within-hemifield tuning of spatial attention. Crucially, this was found not only for the currently relevant modality, but also for the currently irrelevant modality. Moreover, these within-hemifield attention effects were statistically equivalent regardless of the task relevance of the modality, for both the auditory and visual ERP data. These results demonstrate that within-hemifield spatial attention for one task-relevant modality can transfer cross-modally to a task-irrelevant modality, consistent with spatial selection at a multimodal level of representation. &
Neuropsychologia, 2002
We examined the electrophysiological correlates of left-sided tactile extinction in a patient wit... more We examined the electrophysiological correlates of left-sided tactile extinction in a patient with right-hemisphere damage. Computercontrolled punctate touch was presented to the left, right or both index fingers in an unpredictable sequence. The patient reported his conscious tactile percept ("left", "right" or "both"). He showed extinction on 75% of bilateral trials, reporting only right stimulation for these. Somatosensory evoked potentials for unilateral stimulation showed early components over contralateral somatosensory areas (P60 and N110) for either hand. In contrast to the results observed for age-matched controls, the patient's P60 was smaller in amplitude for left-hand touch over the right hemisphere than for right-hand touch over the intact hemisphere. Bilateral trials with extinction revealed residual P60 and N110 components over the right hemisphere in response to the extinguished left touch. These results demonstrate residual unconscious somatosensory processing of extinguished touch. They also suggest that tactile extinction can be caused by attenuation rather than elimination of somatosensory responses in the damaged hemisphere, with an underlying deficit even on unilateral trials.
Neuropsychologia, 2005
The premotor theory of attention claims that the preparation of goal-directed action and shifts o... more The premotor theory of attention claims that the preparation of goal-directed action and shifts of attention are closely linked, because they are controlled by shared sensorymotor mechanisms. Until now, support for this theory has come primarily from studies demonstrating links between saccade programming and attention shifts. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study demonstrated that attentional orienting processes are also elicited during the covert preparation of unimanual responses. ERPs were recorded in the interval between a visual response-hand selection cue and a subsequent visual Go/Nogo signal when participants prepared to lift their left or right index finger. Lateralised ERP components elicited during response preparation were very similar to components previously observed during instructed endogenous attention shifts, indicating that analogous attentional orienting processes are activated in both cases. Somatosensory ERP components (P90, N140) were enhanced when task-irrelevant tactile probes were delivered during response preparation to the hand involved in an anticipated response, even when probes were presented well in advance of response execution. These results suggest that attentional shifts are triggered during unimanual response preparation, as predicted by the premotor theory. This link between manual response programming and attention is consistent with the hypothesis that common mechanisms are involved in the control of attention and action.
Psychophysiology, Mar 1, 2008
The N2pc component has recently become a popular tool in attention research. To investigate wheth... more The N2pc component has recently become a popular tool in attention research. To investigate whether this component exclusively reflects attentional target selection, or also prior stages in attentional processing (covert orienting, target-unspecific spatial attention), a spatial cueing procedure was combined with a visual search task. In some blocks, informative cues indicated the side of upcoming singleton targets that were present on most trials among uniform distractors. In other blocks, cues were spatially uninformative, and no preparatory shifts of attention were possible. The N2pc in response to targets was unaffected by this manipulation, showing that this component is not associated with attention shifts. Following informative cues, an attenuated N2pc was elicited by uniform non-target arrays, suggesting that the N2pc may also reflect spatially specific processing of stimulus features at task-relevant locations prior to target selection. Over the past thirty years, the brain mechanisms underlying visual-spatial attention have been studied intensively with event-related brain potential (ERP) measures. Different ERP components have been found to be modulated during spatially selective visual processing, and these components have been linked to different underlying sub-processes of spatial attention. The first type of attention-sensitive ERP effect was uncovered in early ERP studies where participants were instructed to direct their attention to a specific location on the left or right side, and keep it focused for an entire experimental block in order to detect target stimuli at that location (cf., Eason, 1981). Visual stimuli presented within the current focus of spatial attention triggered enhanced sensory-specific visual P1 and N1 components at posterior electrodes. Analogous P1 and N1 amplitude modulations were also observed when attention was manipulated in a trial-by-trial fashion by spatial precues that were presented at the start of each trial (cf. . Because these P1/N1 enhancements for stimuli at attended locations were present irrespective of whether these stimuli were targets or non-targets (e.g., , they are interpreted as reflecting location-specific sensory gating mechanisms in early visual processing that precede the subsequent selection of targets over non-targets. They are assumed to be triggered by top-down signals from higher-order attentional control areas that bias the excitability of visual cortical areas in favour of any sensory input that originates from currently task-relevant locations (cf., Mangun, 1995). Other attention-sensitive ERP modulations found in more recent studies during cued shifts of spatial attention were interpreted as electrophysiological markers of top-down attentional control processes. In these studies, ERP components sensitive to the direction of cued attentional shifts were quantified by comparing ERP waveforms triggered in the interval
Seeing and Perceiving, 2012
Experimental evidence has shown that the actions we intend to perform influence the way our visua... more Experimental evidence has shown that the actions we intend to perform influence the way our visual system processes information in the environment, consistent with the considerable overlap observed between brain circuits involved in action and attention. Conceptual thinking about action-perception links in cognitive science is heavily influenced by earlier work that has established that motor preparation causes a shift of attention to the goal of a movement. This sensory enhancement is characterised on a behavioural level by improved detection and discrimination performance at that location, and neurally by larger responses in visual cortex to stimuli presented there. In a series of experiments we examined electrophysiological visual cortex responses (ERPs) to task-irrelevant visual probe stimuli presented at various locations in movement space during preparation of manual reaching movements. The data from these experiments show simultaneous enhanced visual processing of stimuli at the location of the effector about to perform the movement and at the goal of the movement. Further, our data demonstrates that compared to controls, adults with Developmental Coordination Disorder show a markedly different pattern of enhanced visual processing during preparation of more complex reaching movement, i.e., across the body midline. This suggests a specific difficulty in this group in recruiting appropriate preparatory visual mechanism for manual movements, which may be related to the difficulties this group experiences in their daily life.
Clinical Neurophysiology, Sep 1, 2007
Objective: The present study investigated whether lateralized ERP components triggered during cov... more Objective: The present study investigated whether lateralized ERP components triggered during covert manual response preparation (ADAN, LDAP) reflect effector selection, the selection of movement direction, or both. Methods: Event-related brain potentials were recorded during a response precueing paradigm where visual cues provided either partial (Experiment 1) or full (Experiment 2) information about the response hand and the direction for a subsequent reaching movement. Results: ADAN and LDAP components were elicited even when only partial response information was available, demonstrating that they do not require the presence of a fully specified motor program. The ADAN was elicited in a similar fashion regardless of whether effector or movement direction information was provided, suggesting that the underlying mechanisms are equally sensitive to both types of response-related information. In contrast, the LDAP was larger in response to cues providing effector information, but was also reliably present when movement direction was available. Conclusions: ADAN and LDAP components reflect preparatory activity within anterior and posterior parts of the parieto-premotor sensorimotor network where different parameters for manual reaching movements are programmed independently. Significance: These results support the claim of the premotor theory of attention that shared sensorimotor control mechanisms are involved in attention and motor programming.
European Journal of Neuroscience, May 1, 2011
Recent studies have suggested that visual experience in childhood is crucial for the automatic ac... more Recent studies have suggested that visual experience in childhood is crucial for the automatic activation of an external spatial reference frame in tactile perception. These findings are largely based on behavioural work, with limited exploration using event-related potentials (ERPs). The present study examined the role of external spatial frameworks on tactile perception by recording ERP correlates of both preparatory processes and somatosensory processing during a tactile attention task for a group of early blind participants and age-matched sighted controls who carried out the task in darkness. Participants had to shift attention to one hand or the other as indicated by an auditory cue presented at the start of each trial, in order to detect infrequent tactile targets delivered to the attended hand. Spatial information about the external environment was acquired in advance during tactile exploration of the testing booth. ERPs measured during the cue-target interval indicated a conflict between anatomical and external spatial reference frames for both early blind and sighted participants, as marked by the delayed onset of the anterior directing attention negativity, although the delay was more pronounced in the sighted. A delay was also observed, irrespective of visual experience, on the onset of attentional modulations of somatosensory ERPs elicited by tactile stimuli. Although these results confirm that neither concurrent nor developmental vision is necessary for the default use of an external spatial framework in tactile attention, they suggest that the relative impact of an external vs. an anatomical spatial coordinate system may be affected by visual experience.
Brain Research, Jul 1, 2009
The ability to minimize processing for irrelevant information is a central component of goaldirec... more The ability to minimize processing for irrelevant information is a central component of goaldirected behavior, which has been suggested to be compromised in old age. In this study, we investigate age differences in distractor rejection by presenting target names alongside tobe-ignored distractor faces. Older adults (mean age 70) showed greater behavioral slowing than young adults (mean age 24) when the distractor face was incompatible with the target name. That this increased interference in the older adults was indeed associated with more distractor processing, was shown by the face-related N170 component of the EEG, which had greater amplitude in older adults when faces were unattended, but not when they were attended. These findings suggest a reduced ability to prevent distractor processing in old age.
Psychophysiology, Sep 1, 2003
Previous experiments investigating ERP correlates of anticipatory attention shifts triggered by c... more Previous experiments investigating ERP correlates of anticipatory attention shifts triggered by central symbolic cues have identified a contralateral ''early directing attention negativity,'' which was assumed to be generated by processes involved in the control of spatial orienting. Here we demonstrate that this component is not directly linked to the control of attentional shifts, but instead reflects the selection of task-relevant aspects of cue stimuli. In contrast, later ERP components triggered during covert attentional shifts are insensitive to physical cue attributes, and thus appear to be genuine electrophysiological correlates of covert attentional control mechanisms.
Velzen, José Lucia van IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publis... more Velzen, José Lucia van IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below.
Velzen, José Lucia van IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publis... more Velzen, José Lucia van IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below.
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Papers by Jose van Velzen