Division of Neuropsychology, Center of Neurology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Division of Psychology, Department of Life Sciences, College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2019 Aug 15;40(12):3589-3605. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24618. Epub 2019 May 6.
The existing literature suggests a critical role for both the right intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) in our ability to attend to multiple simultaneously-presented lateralized targets (multi-target attention), and the failure of this ability in extinction patients. Currently, however, the precise role of each of these areas in multi-target attention is unclear. In this study, we combined the theory of visual attention (TVA) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) guided continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) in neurologically healthy subjects to directly investigate the role of the right IPS and TPJ in multi-target attention. Our results show that cTBS at an area of the right IPS associated with multi-target attention elicits a reduction of visual short-term memory capacity. This suggests that the right IPS is associated with a general capacity-limited encoding mechanism that is engaged regardless of whether targets have to be attended or remembered. Curiously, however, cTBS to the right IPS failed to elicit extinction-like behavior in our study, supporting previous suggestions that different areas of the right IPS may provide different contributions to multi-target attention. CTBS to the right TPJ failed to induce a change in either TVA parameters or extinction-like behavior.
现有文献表明，右顶内沟（IPS）和右颞顶交界处（TPJ）在我们注意多个同时呈现的偏侧目标（多目标注意）的能力中起着关键作用，而在消退患者中这种能力则失效。然而，目前这两个区域在多目标注意中的具体作用尚不清楚。在这项研究中，我们结合视觉注意理论（TVA）和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）引导的连续 theta 爆发刺激（cTBS），在神经健康的受试者中直接研究了右 IPS 和 TPJ 在多目标注意中的作用。我们的结果表明，对与多目标注意相关的右 IPS 区域进行 cTBS 刺激会导致视觉短期记忆容量的减少。这表明右 IPS 与一种普遍的、容量有限的编码机制有关，无论目标是否需要注意或记住，这种机制都会被激活。然而，令人好奇的是，在我们的研究中，对右 IPS 进行 cTBS 刺激并没有引发类似消退的行为，这支持了之前的观点，即右 IPS 的不同区域可能对多目标注意有不同的贡献。对右 TPJ 进行 cTBS 刺激既没有改变 TVA 参数，也没有引起类似消退的行为。
