ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2026
A Shared Theta-Rhythmic Process for Selective Sampling of Environmental Information and Internally Stored Information.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Frontal theta phase modulates asymmetric posterior neural mechanisms of spatial attention.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Processing of different word list lengths during encoding and retrieval in Broca's area.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Concurrent selection of internal goals and external sensations during visual search.Science advances · 2025Article
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2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Selective attention is the collection of mechanisms through which the brain preferentially processes behaviorally important information. Many everyday tasks, such as shopping for groceries, require selective sampling of both external information (i.e., information from the environment) and internally stored information (i.e., information being maintained in working memory). While there is clear evidence that selective sampling of external information is influenced by internally stored information (and vice versa), the extent to which selective sampling of external and internal information compete for the same neural resources and attention-related processes remains a focus of debate. Previous research has linked theta-rhythmic (3-8 Hz) neural activity in higher-order (e.g., frontal cortices) and sensory regions to theta-rhythmic changes in behavioral performance during selective sampling. Here, we used electroencephalography and a dual-task design (i.e., a task that required both external and internal information), in male and female humans, to directly compare theta-dependent fluctuations in behavioral performance during external sampling with those during internal sampling. Our findings are consistent with a shared theta-rhythmic process for selectively sampling external information or internal information. This theta-rhythmic sampling is associated with both phase-dependent changes in sensory responses (i.e., as measured with the N1 component) and phase-dependent changes in interactions between external and internal information. The theta phase associated with weaker sensory responses and relatively worse behavioral performance (i.e., the "bad" phase) is also associated with a slowed perceptual decision-making process (as measured with the centroparietal positivity component), specifically during dual-task trials when to-be-detected external information matches to-be-remembered internal information.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.