Causal Evidence for the Role of Neuronal Oscillations in Top-Down and Bottom-Up Attention

By Justin Riddle, Kai Hwang, Dillan Cellier, Sofia Dhanani, Mark D'Esposito. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2019

66 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Beta and gamma frequency neuronal oscillations have been implicated in top–down and bottom–up attention. In this study, we used rhythmic TMS to modulate ongoing beta and gamma frequency neuronal oscillations in frontal and parietal cortex while human participants performed a visual search task that manipulates bottom–up and top–down attention (single feature and conjunction search). Both task conditions will engage bottom–up attention processes, although the conjunction search condition will require more top–down attention. Gamma frequency TMS to superior precentral sulcus (sPCS) slowed saccadic RTs during both task conditions and induced a response bias to the contralateral visual field. In contrary, beta frequency TMS to sPCS and intraparietal sulcus decreased search accuracy only during the conjunction search condition that engaged more top–down attention. Furthermore, beta frequency TMS increased trial errors specifically when the target was in the ipsilateral visual field for the conjunction search condition. These results indicate that beta frequency TMS to sPCS and intraparietal sulcus disrupted top–down attention, whereas gamma frequency TMS to sPCS disrupted bottom–up, stimulus-driven attention processes. These findings provide causal evidence suggesting that beta and gamma oscillations have distinct functional roles for cognition.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01376

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Citations in the corpus

Impact of sensory integration in modulating neuronal oscillation bands and antagonist vibratory response during co-vibration (2026, unknown): “Additionally, researchers have highlighted the distinct roles of neuronal oscillation bands, including α , β , and γ , in different sensory integration processes, particularly under tactile stimulation and VIS, in different cortical brain areas (Ryun et al., 2017; Riddle et al., 2019).”
Individualized prediction of heroin cue-induced craving using task-based EEG functional connectivity (2026, unknown): “Functionally, β -band oscillations are essential for long-range cortical synchronization and typically mediate top-down directed in ﬂ uences 38 .”
Alpha oscillations support attentional orienting while beta supports perceptual decision-making (2026, unknown): “Such division of labour aligns with emerging frameworks proposing that beta oscillations coordinate top-down signals of attention (Richter et al., 2017; Riddle et al., 2019), whilst alpha regulates sensory sampling (Thut et al., 2006).”
After-effects of parieto-occipital gamma transcranial alternating current stimulation on behavioral performance and neural activity in visuo-spatial attention task (2026, unknown): “At the behavioral level, active stimulation was associated with a reduction in reaction time (RT) from pre-to post-stimulation, with effects that were not uniform across cueing conditions (Figure 2).”
Inflammation-related aberrations in beta and gamma oscillatory dynamics serving attention processing in typically developing youth (2025, unknown): “71-76 The role of gamma-band activity in bottom–up attentional processing has been well-established in the literature, 61,77-79 and studies have shown that stronger gamma activity within frontoparietal regions is often indicative of greater attentional capacity.”
Rhythmic beta-frequency TMS over human right parietal cortex strengthens visual size illusions (2025, unknown): “In particular, beta-frequency TMS to intraparietal sulcus decreases search accuracy during the conjunction search task that engages top-down attention (Riddle et al., 2019).”
Beta oscillation modulations of the orienting attention network effect correlate with dopamine-dependent motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (2024, unknown): “Beta oscillations are known to be involved in motor and cognitive preparation processes, which play a crucial role in regulating visual attention through top-down mechanisms (Riddle et al. 2019).”
Neural dynamics of metacognitive monitoring: a dual-stage perspective on judgments of learning (2024, unknown): “The beta frequency range of analysis was 4–8 Hz (Ketz et al., 2014; Riddle et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2022 ), while the theta frequency range was 15–30 Hz (Wokke et al., 2020 ; Soutschek et al., 2021 ).”
Modulating prefrontal cortex activity to alleviate stress-induced working memory deficits: A transcranial direct current (tDCS) study (2024, unknown): “…control goal-relevant information and alpha oscillations suppress goal-irrelevant information during WM task performance (Dong et al., 2015; Riddle et al., 2019), while higher theta event-related synchronization (ERS) and higher alpha event-related desynchronization (ERD) have been linked…”
Multimodal neuroimaging of hierarchical cognitive control. (2024, methodology): “…successfully used in previous studies (but without simultaneous EEG recordings), showing that the behavioral impact of TMS critically depends on the match be-tween the frequency of stimulation and the ongoing task-relevant neural oscillations (Riddle et al., 2019; Riddle, Scimeca, et al., 2020).”
Distinct Contributions of Alpha and Beta Oscillations to Context-Dependent Visual Size Perception (2024, unknown): “In a visual search task, beta-frequency transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the superior precentral sulcus and intraparietal sulcus decreases search accuracy during conjunction search which engages top-down attention [61].”