Marty G. Woldorff

Journal article Cereb Cortex · March 2012 Featured Publication Reward has been shown to promote human performance in multiple task domains. However, an important debate has developed about the uniqueness of reward-related neural signatures associated with such facilitation, as similar neural patterns can be triggered ... Full text Link to item Cite

Differential functional roles of slow-wave and oscillatory-α activity in visual sensory cortex during anticipatory visual-spatial attention.

Journal article Cereb Cortex · October 2011 Featured Publication Markers of preparatory visual-spatial attention in sensory cortex have been described both as lateralized, slow-wave event-related potential (ERP) components and as lateralized changes in oscillatory-electroencephalography alpha power, but the roles of the ... Full text Link to item Cite

Rapid modulation of sensory processing induced by stimulus conflict.

Journal article J Cogn Neurosci · September 2011 Featured Publication Humans are constantly confronted with environmental stimuli that conflict with task goals and can interfere with successful behavior. Prevailing theories propose the existence of cognitive control mechanisms that can suppress the processing of conflicting ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

The neural underpinnings of how reward associations can both guide and misguide attention.

Journal article J Neurosci · June 29, 2011 Featured Publication It is commonly accepted that reward is an effective motivator of behavior, but little is known about potential costs resulting from reward associations. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural underpinnings of s ... Full text Link to item Cite

Sandwich masking eliminates both visual awareness of faces and face-specific brain activity through a feedforward mechanism.

Journal article J Vis · June 7, 2011 Featured Publication It is generally agreed that considerable amounts of low-level sensory processing of visual stimuli can occur without conscious awareness. On the other hand, the degree of higher level visual processing that occurs in the absence of awareness is as yet uncl ... Full text Link to item Cite

The cross-modal spread of attention reveals differential constraints for the temporal and spatial linking of visual and auditory stimulus events.

Journal article J Neurosci · June 1, 2011 Featured Publication The integration of multisensory information has been shown to be guided by spatial and temporal proximity, as well as to be influenced by attention. Here we used neural measures of the multisensory spread of attention to investigate the spatial and tempora ... Full text Link to item Cite

Substantia nigra activity level predicts trial-to-trial adjustments in cognitive control.

Journal article J Cogn Neurosci · February 2011 Featured Publication Effective adaptation to the demands of a changing environment requires flexible cognitive control. The medial and the lateral frontal cortices are involved in such control processes, putatively in close interplay with the BG. In particular, dopaminergic pr ... Full text Link to item Cite

The influence of reward associations on conflict processing in the Stroop task.

Journal article Cognition · December 2010 Featured Publication Performance in a behavioral task can be facilitated by associating stimulus properties with reward. In contrast, conflicting information is known to impede task performance. Here we investigated how reward associations influence the within-trial processing ... Full text Link to item Cite

Pinning down response inhibition in the brain--conjunction analyses of the Stop-signal task.

Journal article Neuroimage · October 1, 2010 Featured Publication Successful behavior requires a finely-tuned interplay of initiating and inhibiting motor programs to react effectively to constantly changing environmental demands. One particularly useful paradigm for investigating inhibitory motor control is the Stop-sig ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

The multifaceted interplay between attention and multisensory integration.

Journal article Trends Cogn Sci · September 2010 Featured Publication Multisensory integration has often been characterized as an automatic process. Recent findings indicate that multisensory integration can occur across various stages of stimulus processing that are linked to, and can be modulated by, attention. Stimulus-dr ... Full text Link to item Cite

The electrophysiological time course of the interaction of stimulus conflict and the multisensory spread of attention.

Journal article Eur J Neurosci · May 2010 Featured Publication Previously, we have shown that spatial attention to a visual stimulus can spread across both space and modality to a synchronously presented but task-irrelevant sound arising from a different location, reflected by a late-onsetting, sustained, negative-pol ... Full text Link to item Cite

Momentary reductions of attention permit greater processing of irrelevant stimuli.

Journal article Neuroimage · November 15, 2009 Featured Publication Momentary reductions of attention can have extremely adverse outcomes, but it remains unclear whether increased distraction from irrelevant stimuli contributes to such outcomes. To investigate this hypothesis, we examined trial-by-trial relationships betwe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Priming and backward influences in the human brain: processing interactions during the stroop interference effect.

Journal article Cereb Cortex · November 2009 Featured Publication This study investigated neural processing interactions during Stroop interference by varying the temporal separation of relevant and irrelevant features of congruent, neutral, and incongruent colored-bar/color-word stimulus components. High-density event-r ... Full text Link to item Cite

Intermodal attention affects the processing of the temporal alignment of audiovisual stimuli.

Journal article Exp Brain Res · September 2009 Featured Publication The temporal asynchrony between inputs to different sensory modalities has been shown to be a critical factor influencing the interaction between such inputs. We used scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the effects of attention on ... Full text Link to item Cite

fMRI evidence for both generalized and specialized components of attentional control.

Journal article Brain Res · October 26, 2007 Featured Publication A central question in the study of selective attention is whether top-down attentional control mechanisms are generalized or specialized for the type of information that is to be attended. The current study examined this question using a voluntary orientin ... Full text Link to item Cite

Selective attention and audiovisual integration: is attending to both modalities a prerequisite for early integration?

Journal article Cereb Cortex · March 2007 Featured Publication Interactions between multisensory integration and attention were studied using a combined audiovisual streaming design and a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. Event-related potentials (ERPs) following audiovisual objects (AV) were compared with th ... Full text Link to item Cite

The neural circuitry underlying the executive control of auditory spatial attention.

Journal article Brain Res · February 23, 2007 Featured Publication Although a fronto-parietal network has consistently been implicated in the control of visual spatial attention, the network that guides spatial attention in the auditory domain is not yet clearly understood. To investigate this issue, we measured brain act ... Full text Link to item Cite

Timing and sequence of brain activity in top-down control of visual-spatial attention.

Journal article PLoS Biol · January 2007 Featured Publication Recent brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have implicated a frontal-parietal network in the top-down control of attention. However, little is known about the timing and sequence of activations within this network. To i ... Full text Link to item Cite

Brain regions activated by endogenous preparatory set shifting as revealed by fMRI.

Journal article Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci · September 2006 Featured Publication An ongoing controversy concerns whether executive control mechanisms can actively reconfigure the cognitive system in preparation for switching to a new task set. To address this question, we recorded brain activity from 14 healthy participants, using even ... Full text Link to item Cite

The neural bases of momentary lapses in attention.

Journal article Nat Neurosci · July 2006 Featured Publication Momentary lapses in attention frequently impair goal-directed behavior, sometimes with serious consequences. Nevertheless, we lack an integrated view of the brain mechanisms underlying such lapses. By investigating trial-by-trial relationships between brai ... Full text Link to item Cite

The spread of attention across modalities and space in a multisensory object.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · December 20, 2005 Featured Publication Attending to a stimulus is known to enhance the neural responses to that stimulus. Recent experiments on visual attention have shown that this modulation can have object-based characteristics, such that, when certain parts of a visual object are attended, ... Full text Link to item Cite

Selective attention and multisensory integration: multiple phases of effects on the evoked brain activity.

Journal article J Cogn Neurosci · July 2005 Featured Publication We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to evaluate the role of attention in the integration of visual and auditory features of multisensory objects. This was done by contrasting the ERPs to multisensory stimuli (AV) to the sum of the ERPs to the correspon ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex resolves conflict from distracting stimuli by boosting attention toward relevant events.

Journal article Cereb Cortex · February 2005 Featured Publication In everyday life, we often focus greater attention on behaviorally relevant stimuli to limit the processing of distracting events. For example, when distracting voices intrude upon a conversation at a noisy social gathering, we concentrate more attention o ... Full text Link to item Cite

The neural mechanisms for minimizing cross-modal distraction.

Journal article J Neurosci · December 1, 2004 Featured Publication The neural circuitry that increases attention to goal-relevant stimuli when we are in danger of becoming distracted is a matter of active debate. To address several long-standing controversies, we asked participants to identify a letter presented either vi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Functional parcellation of attentional control regions of the brain.

Journal article J Cogn Neurosci · 2004 Featured Publication Recently, a number of investigators have examined the neural loci of psychological processes enabling the control of visual spatial attention using cued-attention paradigms in combination with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Findings f ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Conflict monitoring in the human anterior cingulate cortex during selective attention to global and local object features.

Journal article Neuroimage · August 2003 Featured Publication Parallel processing affords the brain many advantages, but processing multiple bits of information simultaneously presents formidable challenges. For example, while one is listening to a speaker at a noisy social gathering, processing irrelevant conversati ... Full text Link to item Cite

The temporal dynamics of the effects in occipital cortex of visual-spatial selective attention.

Journal article Brain Res Cogn Brain Res · December 2002 Featured Publication The temporal dynamics of the effects of lateralized visual selective attention within the lower visual field were studied with the combined application of event-related potentials (ERPs) and positron emission tomography (15O PET). Bilateral stimuli were ra ... Full text Link to item Cite

Delayed striate cortical activation during spatial attention.

Journal article Neuron · August 1, 2002 Featured Publication Recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related magnetic fields (ERMFs) were combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study visual cortical activity in humans during spatial attention. While subjects attended selectivel ... Full text Link to item Cite

Structure--function spatial covariance in the human visual cortex.

Journal article Cereb Cortex · August 2001 Featured Publication The value of sulcal landmarks for predicting functional areas was quantitatively examined. Medial occipital sulci were identified using anatomical magnetic resonance images to create individual cortical-surface models. Functional visual areas were identifi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Automated Talairach atlas labels for functional brain mapping.

Journal article Hum Brain Mapp · July 2000 Featured Publication An automated coordinate-based system to retrieve brain labels from the 1988 Talairach Atlas, called the Talairach Daemon (TD), was previously introduced [Lancaster et al., 1997]. In the present study, the TD system and its 3-D database of labels for the 19 ... Full text Link to item Cite

A movement-sensitive area in auditory cortex.

Journal article Nature · August 19, 1999 Featured Publication Full text Link to item Cite

Hemodynamic and electrophysiological study of the role of the anterior cingulate in target-related processing and selection for action.

Journal article Hum Brain Mapp · 1999 Featured Publication A number of experiments requiring attention or other complex cognitive functions have found substantial activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Some of these studies have suggested that this area may be involved in "selection for action," such a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Lateralized auditory spatial perception and the contralaterality of cortical processing as studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography.

Journal article Hum Brain Mapp · 1999 Featured Publication Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) were used to study the relationships between lateralized auditory perception in humans and the contralaterality of processing in auditory cortex. Subjects listened to rapidly pre ... Full text Link to item Cite

Randomized event-related experimental designs allow for extremely rapid presentation rates using functional MRI.

Journal article Neuroreport · November 16, 1998 Featured Publication Previous studies have shown that hemodynamic response overlap severely limits the maximum presentation rate with event-related functional MRI (fMRI) using fixed intertrial experimental designs. Here we demonstrate that the use of randomized experimental de ... Full text Link to item Cite

Magnetoencephalographic recordings demonstrate attentional modulation of mismatch-related neural activity in human auditory cortex.

Journal article Psychophysiology · May 1998 Featured Publication It is widely agreed that the negative brain potential elicited at 150-200 ms by a deviant, less intense sound in a repetitive series can be modulated by attention. To investigate whether this modulation represents a genuine attention effect on the mismatch ... Full text Link to item Cite

Intersubject variability of functional areas in the human visual cortex.

Journal article Hum Brain Mapp · 1998 Featured Publication Intersubject variability of striate and extrastriate areas was mapped by conjoined use of positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We used two dynamic bowtie-shaped random-dot patterns centered symmetrically around the verti ... Full text Link to item Cite

Retinotopic organization of early visual spatial attention effects as revealed by PET and ERPs.

Journal article Hum Brain Mapp · 1997 Featured Publication Cerebral blood flow PET scans and high-density event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded (separate sessions) while subjects viewed rapidly-presented, lower-visual-field, bilateral stimuli. Active attention to a designated side of the stimuli (relative ... Full text Link to item Cite

Modulation of early sensory processing in human auditory cortex during auditory selective attention.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · September 15, 1993 Featured Publication Neuromagnetic fields were recorded from human subjects as they listened selectively to sequences of rapidly presented tones in one ear while ignoring tones of a different pitch in the opposite ear. Tones in the attended ear evoked larger magnetic brain res ... Full text Link to item Cite

Distortion of ERP averages due to overlap from temporally adjacent ERPs: analysis and correction.

Journal article Psychophysiology · January 1993 Featured Publication In studies of event-related potentials (ERPs), short interstimulus intervals (ISIs) are often employed to investigate certain neural or psychological phenomena. At short ISIs, however, the ERP responses to successive stimuli may overlap, thereby distorting ... Full text Link to item Cite

Modulation of early auditory processing during selective listening to rapidly presented tones.

Journal article Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol · September 1991 Featured Publication Two dichotic listening experiments were performed in which stimulus and task conditions were optimized for the early selection of inputs. Subjects listened selectively to sequences of rapidly presented tone pips in one ear while ignoring tone pips of a dif ... Full text Link to item Cite

The effects of channel-selective attention on the mismatch negativity wave elicited by deviant tones.

Journal article Psychophysiology · January 1991 Featured Publication The mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related brain potential elicited by infrequent, physically deviant sounds in a sequence of repetitive auditory stimuli. Two dichotic listening experiments that were designed to optimize the selective focusing of at ... Full text Link to item Cite