Cosman Joshua D, Atreya Priyanka V, Woodman Geoffrey F
Department of Psychology, Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Department of Psychology, Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Cognition. 2015 Dec;145:73-6. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.010. Epub 2015 Aug 28.
The ability to overcome distraction is critical to a number of goal-directed behaviors, but information that is not relevant to our goals often captures our attention and distracts us from the task at hand. Neuroimaging work has demonstrated that activity in specific regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) is related to the suppression of distracting information, implicating PFC as a critical node in the goal-directed control network. In the current work we asked whether applying transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) to PFC would influence the likelihood of attentional capture by salient, task-irrelevant visual information encountered during visual search. Our results showed that anodal stimulation, relative to sham or cathodal stimulation, led to a transient decrease in attentional capture lasting approximately 15 min after stimulation. This provides causal evidence that PFC is involved in goal-directed control over distraction, and provides a basis for using PFC stimulation as a causal tool to understand deficits in goal-directed control in both neurologically healthy and impaired populations.
克服分心的能力对于许多目标导向行为至关重要，但与我们目标无关的信息常常会吸引我们的注意力，使我们从手头的任务中分心。神经影像学研究表明，外侧前额叶皮层（PFC）特定区域的活动与抑制分心信息有关，这表明PFC是目标导向控制网络中的关键节点。在当前的研究中，我们探讨了对PFC施加经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）是否会影响在视觉搜索过程中遇到的显著、与任务无关的视觉信息引起注意捕获的可能性。我们的结果表明，与假刺激或阴极刺激相比，阳极刺激导致注意捕获短暂减少，刺激后持续约15分钟。这提供了因果证据，证明PFC参与了对分心的目标导向控制，并为将PFC刺激用作因果工具以了解神经功能正常和受损人群在目标导向控制方面的缺陷提供了基础。
