Аннотация:Nowadays eye movements (EM) are usually recorded by the video eye
tracking (ET) technology. It is widely used for EM pattern analyses during perusal of complex image, but it is seldom done simultaneously with EEG recording. Some electrophysiological parameters (EEG, ECG, GSR) are traditionally considered to indicate processes, related to solving visual tasks. We studied the EEG correlates of finding a relevant stimulus (RS) among irrelevant stimuli (IS) during the visual search task performance. By means of precise EEG and ET synchronization we marked out the short EEG fragments concurrent with the moment of finding the RS and analyzed them. The experiments were held over 15 volunteers without neurological history. 100 images with about fifty nonverbal stimuli were exposed to each subject. The task consisted of finding the RS and fixing the gaze on it for a couple of seconds. There were 45–57 IS on each image and one RS with a pseudorandomly varied position. The difference between two stimuli types was not too hard to detect (all subjects managed to find the proper stimulus on each picture), and at the same time it was not too simple (it seldomtook the subjects less than a second to find the key stimulus). The differences among ISwere in rotation angle, position and size, but they were always of the same shape. The EEG was recorded over О1, О2, Р3, Р4, С3, С4, F3, F4 leads.We also recorded the EOG,whichwas used for determining the saccade moving the eyes towards the RS. The gaze fixation on RS was verified by ET. We showed that the RS finding induces an event-related desynchronization (ERD) in alpha band (8–12 Hz). RS finding causes the 1,5–2 times decrease in EEG amplitude in comparison with searching process. ERD was best exposed in occipital and parietal leads. We conclude that solving the visual search task induces changes in human functional condition like top-down attention and recognition,which are partly indicated by ERD. Further research may result in a determining object's visual features, evoking changes in human status. The project is supported by RFBR grant (№ 06-04-48166).