Key words: Attention, learning, oscillations

"Drawn to the rhythm; Measuring and modulating brain oscillations during visual attention and learning"

The brain communicates with rhythmic electrical signals, called neural oscillations. In this thesis, we measured the changes in neural oscillations during attention and learning and aimed at modulating it through electrical brain stimulation. In the first part, we show that electrical brain stimulation can be used to shift the focus of attention in space. This effect is specific to voluntary attentional processes, the site of stimulation and is most pronounced if the stimulation is individually tailored to the participant. In the second part of this thesis, we performed experiments with patients that have electrode implants deep in the brain for the treatment of epilepsy. We found changes in oscillations in the deep brain structure during an attention task and show that electrical brain stimulation influences task performance. The third part of this thesis reveals that frequent perception of the same visual stimulus leads to changes in oscillations specifically for the trained but not an untrained stimulus.

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