Fig 8 - uploaded by Marco Bertamini
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Control experiment stimuli in the attend central color block. Participants completed two blocks, the Attend peripheral regularity block (which was the same as Experiment A) and the Attend central color block, where the task was to respond to a blue patch in the central region. Stimuli from the Attend central color block are shown here.
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... ignore regularity of the peripheral patterns. We thus ran a control experiment with two blocks. One block was a repeat of Experiment A, which we called the 'Attend peripheral regularity block'. In the other block, spatial attention was focused on the central region and participants discriminated the presence or absence of a blue background patch (Fig. 8). We called this the 'Attend central color block'. The order of blocks was ...
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Citations
... However, more recently researchers have begun to explore the SPN under generic conditions by using real-life objects and patterns disrupted by perspective (Makin, Rampone, Karakashevska, & Bertamini, 2020b). Derpsch et al. (2019) found that while the brain response to symmetry can be enhanced when symmetry is presented in attended regions of the screen, it is still robust when symmetry is presented in unattended regions. In another study, Derpsch et al. (2021) found that the SPN is not diminished by a concurrent visual working memory task. ...
Visual symmetry activates a network of regions in the extrastriate cortex and generates an event‐related potential (ERP) called the sustained posterior negativity (SPN). Previous work has found that the SPN is robust to experimental manipulations of task, spatial attention, and memory load. In the current study, we investigated whether the SPN is also robust to alcohol‐induced changes in mental state. A pilot experiment (N = 13) found that alcohol unexpectedly increased SPN amplitude. We followed this unexpected result with two new experiments on separate groups, using an alcohol challenge paradigm. One group completed an Oddball discrimination task (N = 26). Another group completed a Regularity discrimination task (N = 26). In both groups, participants consumed a medium dose of alcohol (0.65 g/kg body weight) and a placebo drink, in separate sessions. Alcohol reduced SPN amplitude in the Oddball task (contrary to the pilot results) but had no effect on SPN amplitude in the Regularity task. In contrast, the N1 wave was consistently dampened by alcohol in all experiments. Exploratory analysis indicated that the inconsistent effect of alcohol on SPN amplitude may be partly explained by individual differences in alcohol use. Alcohol reduced the SPN in light drinkers and increased it in heavier drinkers. Despite remaining questions, the results highlight the automaticity of symmetry processing. Symmetry still produces a large SPN response, even when participants are intoxicated, and even when symmetry is not task relevant.
... Figure from Makin et al. (2022). Derpsch et al. (2019) found that whilst the brain response to symmetry can be enhanced when symmetry is presented in attended regions of the screen, it is still robust when symmetry is presented unattended regions. In addition, Derpsch et al. (2021) found that the SPN is not diminished by a concurrent visual working memory task, suggesting the SPN is also robust to variations in visual memory load. ...
Visual symmetry activates a network of regions in the extrastriate cortex and generates an event related potential (ERP) called the sustained posterior negativity (SPN). Previous work has found that the SPN is robust to experimental manipulations of task, spatial attention, and memory load. In the current study, we investigated whether the SPN is also robust to alcohol induced changes in mental state. A pilot experiment (N = 13) found that alcohol unexpectedly increased SPN amplitude. We followed this unexpected result with two new experiments on separate groups, using an alcohol challenge paradigm. One group completed an Oddball discrimination task (N = 26). Another group completed a Regularity discrimination task (N =26). In both groups participants consumed a medium dose of alcohol (0.65 g/kg body weight) and placebo drink, in separate sessions. Alcohol reduced SPN amplitude in the Oddball task (contrary to the pilot results) but had no effect on SPN amplitude in the Regularity task. In contrast, the N1 wave was consistently dampened by alcohol in all experiments. Exploratory analysis indicated that the inconsistent effect of alcohol on SPN amplitude may be partly explained by individual differences in alcohol use. Alcohol reduced the SPN in light drinkers and increased it in heavier drinkers. Despite remaining questions, the results highlight the automaticity of symmetry processing. Symmetry still produces a large SPN response, even when participants are intoxicated, and even when symmetry is not task relevant.
... More evidence for automaticity comes from a recent experiment on covert spatial attention (Derpsch et al., 2019) that found a contralateral SPN when symmetry appeared to the left or right of fixation. This contralateral SPN was similar whether covert spatial attention was directed towards symmetry or not. ...
... The apparatus was the same as our recent SPN research ( (Derpsch et al., 2019). Participants were held 57 cm from a 51° × 29° 60 Hz LCD monitor. ...
... These novel results emphasize the automaticity of symmetry processing. Previous work has shown that the SPN is attention-proof Derpsch et al., 2019;Makin et al., 2020) and the evidence presented here shows that the SPN is also memory-proof. All these results provide converging evidence for automaticity of symmetry processing. ...
An Event Related Potential response to visual symmetry, known as the Sustained Posterior Negativity (SPN), is generated whether symmetry is task relevant or not, and whether symmetry is attended or not. However, no study has yet examined interference from concurrent memory tasks. To answer this fundamental question, we investigated whether the SPN is robust to variation in Visual Working Memory (VWM) load. In Experiment 1 (N = 24), each trial involved a sample display, a probe and a test display. Sample and test displays contained either four colors or four black shapes, and the probe was either a symmetrical or random pattern. We compared a memory task and a passive viewing task. In the memory task, participants held color or shape information in VWM when the probe was presented. In the passive viewing task, there were no memory demands. Contrary to our predictions, there was no evidence that VWM interfered with the symmetry response. Instead, there was a general SPN enhancement during both color and shape memory tasks compared to passive viewing. In Experiment 2 (N = 24), we used symmetrical patterns themselves as sample and test to maximize interference. Again, the SPN was enhanced in the memory task compared to passive viewing. We conclude that the visual symmetry response is not impaired by concurrent VWM tasks, even when these tasks involve remembering symmetry itself. It seems that the SPN is not only attention‐proof, but also memory‐proof. This adds to evidence that symmetry perception is robust and automatic.
