Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
J Neurosci. 2013 Jun 12;33(24):10057-65. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0850-13.2013.
Whether allocation of visuospatial attention can be divorced from saccade preparation has been the subject of intense research efforts. A variant of the visual search paradigm, in which a feature singleton indicates that the correct saccade should be directed to it (prosaccade) or to the opposite distractor (antisaccade), has been influential in addressing this core topic. We performed a causal assessment of this controversy by delivering an air puff to one eye to invoke the trigeminal blink reflex as monkeys performed this visual search task. Blinks effectively remove saccadic inhibition and prematurely trigger impending saccades in reaction time tasks, thus providing a behavioral readout of the premotor plan. We found that saccades accompanied blinks during the initial allocation of attention epoch and that these movements were directed to the singleton for both prosaccade and antisaccade trials. Blinks evoked at later times were accompanied with saccades to the correct end point location: the singleton on prosaccade trials and the opposite distractor on antisaccade trials. These results provide support for concurrent encoding of visuospatial attention and saccade preparation during visual search behavior.
视觉空间注意的分配是否可以脱离眼跳准备一直是研究的热点。一种视觉搜索范式的变体，其中特征单一是指正确的眼跳应该指向它（正眼跳）或指向相反的分心物（反眼跳），在解决这个核心问题上具有重要意义。我们通过向一只眼睛吹气来引发三叉神经眨眼反射，让猴子在执行这个视觉搜索任务时，对这一争议进行了因果评估。眨眼可以有效地消除眼跳抑制，并在反应时间任务中提前触发即将到来的眼跳，从而为运动前计划提供行为读出。我们发现，在最初的注意力分配时期，眨眼伴随着眼跳，并且这些运动在正眼跳和反眼跳试验中都指向了单一体。在稍后的时间点引发的眨眼伴随着向正确的终点位置的眼跳：正眼跳试验中的单一体和反眼跳试验中的相反分心物。这些结果为在视觉搜索行为中视觉空间注意和眼跳准备的同时编码提供了支持。
