Fig 6 - uploaded by Marco Bertamini
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Posterior SPN topography in early window (250-350 ms, left) and late window (500-1000 ms, right). The color-coded borders around the stimuli are the same as in Fig. 4A. The yellow and grey overlays illustrate the spotlight of spatial attention, focusing on the cued location. The electrodes used in analysis are highlighted top left.
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... When averaging across other Interval and other factors, the attentional effect was present in 31/48 participants, while the SPN itself was presented in 46/48 participants. This highlights the fact that the contralateral SPN was primarily stimulus driven, and only weakly altered by spatial attention. This is also illustrated in the topoplots in Fig. 6: The contralateral SPN is similar whether symmetry is attended or ...
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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.
