EEG Band Patterns for Top-Down vs Bottom-Up Control During the Psychomotor Vigilance Task: A Meta-Analysis

Monitoring cognitive vigilance during attentive tasks, such as the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT), helps evaluate performance. EEG can be used to track the type of attentive control being used during task progression: top-down (TD; goal-driven) or bottom-up (BU; salient driven). This is contingent on the dichotomous view of attention (Gaspelin & Luck, 2018), which excludes a third proposed mechanism: selection bias (Awh et al., 2012). In this literature review, it is proposed that low frequency beta (β) waves are a strong index of TD control. BU control, however, lacks a clear EEG metric such as proposed gamma (𝛾) waves (Buschman & Miller, 2007). Additionally, mission constraints prevent the ideal use of both spatial fMRI and temporal EEG. For such a metric, a follow up investigation measuring changes in β wave activity from baseline may provide an indirect metric of BU control. Furthermore, a general lack of understanding of BU control and its possible task subsets warrants exploration.