Publications

Authors:

Lega, Carlotta; Santandrea, Elisa; Ferrante, Oscar; Serpe, Rossana; Dolci, Carola; Baldini, Eleonora; Cattaneo, Luigi; Chelazzi, Leonardo

Title:

Modulating the influence of recent trial history on attentional capture via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of right TPJ

Year:

2020

Type of item:

Articolo in Rivista

Tipologia ANVUR:

Articolo su rivista

Language:

Inglese

Format:

A Stampa

Referee:

Sì

Name of journal:

Cortex

ISSN of journal:

0010-9452

N° Volume:

133

:

Masson

Page numbers:

149-160

Keyword:

attentional capture; middle-frontal gyrus; temporo-parietal junction; transcranial magnetic stimulation; ventral attentional network

Short description of contents:

In visual search, salient yet task-irrelevant distractors in the stimulus array interfere with target selection. This is due to the unwanted shift of attention towards the salient stimulus-the so-called attentional capture effect, which delays deployment of attention onto the target. Although powerful and automatic, attentional capture by a salient distractor is nonetheless antagonized by distractor-filtering mechanisms and is further modulated by cross-trial contingencies: The distractor cost is typically more robust when no distraction has been experienced in the immediate past, compared to when a distractor was present on the immediately preceding trial. Here, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to shed light on the causal role of two crucial nodes of the ventral attention network, namely the Temporo-Parietal Junction (TPJ) and the Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG), in the exogenous control of attention (i.e., attentional capture) and its history-dependent modulation. Participants were asked to discriminate the direction of a target arrow while ignoring a task-irrelevant salient distractor, when present. Immediately after display onset, 10 Hz triple-pulse TMS was delivered either to TPJ or MFG on the right hemisphere. Results demonstrated that stimulation of right TPJ-but not of right MFG, strongly modulated attentional capture as a function of the type of previous trial, by somewhat enhancing the distractor-related cost when the preceding trial was a distractor-absent trial and significantly decreasing the cost when the preceding trial was a distractor-present trial. These findings indicate that TMS of right TPJ exacerbates the effect of the recent history, likely reflecting enhanced updating of the predictive model that dynamically governs proactive distractor-filtering mechanisms. More generally, the results attest to a role of TPJ in mediating the history-dependent modulation of attentional capture.

Web page:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.09.009

Product ID:

117245

Handle IRIS:

11562/1028546

Last Modified:

November 17, 2022

Bibliographic citation:

Lega, Carlotta; Santandrea, Elisa; Ferrante, Oscar; Serpe, Rossana; Dolci, Carola; Baldini, Eleonora; Cattaneo, Luigi; Chelazzi, Leonardo, Modulating the influence of recent trial history on attentional capture via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of right TPJ «Cortex» , vol. 133 , 2020 , pp. 149-160

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