Human alpha-band activity (8–12 Hz) has been proposed to index a variety of mechanisms during visual processing. Here, we distinguished between an account in which alpha suppression indexes selective attention versus an account in which it indexes subsequent working memory storage. We manipulated two aspects of the visual stimuli that perceptual attention is believed to mitigate before working memory storage: the potential interference from distractors and the size of the focus of attention. We found that the magnitude of alpha-band suppression tracked both of these aspects of the visual arrays. Thus, alpha-band activity after stimulus onset is clearly related to how the visual system deploys perceptual attention and appears to be distinct from mechanisms that store target representations in working memory.

人类 alpha 波段活动 (8–12 Hz) 已被提议用于索引视觉处理过程中的各种机制。在这里，我们区分了 alpha 抑制索引选择性注意的帐户与索引后续工作记忆存储的帐户。我们操纵了视觉刺激的两个方面，在工作记忆存储之前，感知注意力可以减轻这些视觉刺激：干扰物的潜在干扰和注意力焦点的大小。我们发现 alpha 波段抑制的幅度跟踪视觉阵列的这两个方面。因此，刺激开始后的 alpha 波段活动显然与视觉系统如何部署感知注意力有关，并且似乎与将目标表征存储在工作记忆中的机制不同。