# Brain Mechanisms of Spontaneous and Learned Attentional Flexibility

> **NIH NIH R15** · WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $410,490

## Abstract

Project Summary
Individuals regularly fluctuate over time in their readiness to shift spatial attention, referred to as attentional
flexibility. Although researchers have historically attributed the control of attention to a combination of stimulus
salience and behavioral goals, a growing body of work has suggested that learning plays an important role in
determining the focus of attention. Learning also modulates moment-by-moment fluctuations in attentional
flexibility such that individuals learn to adjust their readiness to shift attention according to the likelihood of
needing to make a shift in their current environment. Adapting attentional flexibility is an important component
of goal-directed behavior. Although the dysfunction of attentional flexibility learning may be a key cognitive
deficit in a variety of psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
schizophrenia, and substance abuse, the neural bases of learned fluctuations in flexibility remain unknown.
This project will integrate existing theories on fluctuations in sustained attention, states of learned attentional
flexibility, and stimulus-driven attentional orienting to ask: how do individuals anticipate task demands and
adapt their readiness to shift attention accordingly? This project proposes a novel neuropsychological
model to account for multiple sources of within-subject variation in shift readiness. Ongoing changes in
sustained attention and attentional flexibility have been independently linked to spontaneous changes in
activity within the brain’s default mode network, while attentional flexibility learning has been associated with
the dorsal and ventral attentional control networks. However, the ways in which spontaneous and learned brain
states interact to determine attentional flexibility, as well as the representational format of shift predictions, are
unknown. Specific Aim 1 is to characterize the interaction of spontaneous fluctuations in default mode
network activity and task-evoked prediction error signals in the dorsal and ventral attention networks. Specific
Aim 2 is to probe the location-independence of attention shift expectation neural representations. Specific
Aim 3 is to identify the mechanisms responsible for impaired attentional flexibility in individuals with high
anxiety. To conduct these studies, undergraduate and master’s-level students will employ innovative
techniques in cognitive neuroscience, including inverted encoding models of fMRI data and event-related
potentials measured through electroencephalography. The goals of this project are to: (1) investigate the
neural bases of within-subject variation in attentional flexibility and (2) to significantly strengthen the research
environment at Wake Forest by including undergraduate and early graduate scientists in cutting-edge research
on attentional control.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10439175
- **Project number:** 1R15MH127491-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Anthony Sali
- **Activity code:** R15 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $410,490
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-04-01 → 2026-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10439175

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10439175, Brain Mechanisms of Spontaneous and Learned Attentional Flexibility (1R15MH127491-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10439175. Licensed CC0.

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