Department of Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. MarieAnne.Vanderhasselt @ UGent.be
Neuropsychobiology. 2010;61(3):162-8. doi: 10.1159/000285781. Epub 2010 Feb 18.
The precise role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in attentional set activation is still not entirely clear. Hence, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) can be applied to interfere with neural processing to determine whether a specific brain area is required in task performance. In this study, the influence of one session of high-frequency (HF)-rTMS of the left DLPFC on a reaction task using visual and auditory trials was investigated. Participants were instructed to pay constant attention to the visual stimuli, and they were informed that distracting auditory stimuli could also appear. Participants had to respond to both stimuli. Results indicate that after one session of HF-rTMS of the left DLPFC, performance was improved for the primary task, but not for the distracters. Specifically, we found decreased response time for an endogenous component of attentional control which embodies the online representations of task-relevant information. To conclude, the current results highlight a specific role of the left DLPFC in actively preparing for a specific task in the presence of a distracting task.
背外侧前额叶皮层（DLPFC）在注意定势激活中的精确作用仍不完全清楚。因此，可以应用重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）来干扰神经处理，以确定在任务执行中是否需要特定的脑区。在这项研究中，研究了一次左 DLPFC 的高频（HF）-rTMS 对使用视觉和听觉试验的反应任务的影响。参与者被指示持续关注视觉刺激，并被告知也可能出现分散注意力的听觉刺激。参与者必须对两种刺激做出反应。结果表明，在一次左 DLPFC 的高频 rTMS 之后，主要任务的表现得到了改善，但对干扰者没有影响。具体来说，我们发现注意控制的内源性成分的反应时间减少了，这体现了与任务相关信息的在线表示。总之，目前的结果强调了左 DLPFC 在存在干扰任务的情况下主动准备特定任务的特定作用。
