Jin Zhenlan, Gou Ruie, Zhang Junjun, Li Ling
Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, High-Field Magnetic Resonance Brain Imaging Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
J Vis. 2021 Mar 1;21(3):11. doi: 10.1167/jov.21.3.11.
Close coupling between attention and smooth pursuit eye movements has been widely established and frontal eye field (FEF) is a "hub" region for attention and eye movements. Frontal pursuit area (FPA), a subregion of the FEF, is part of neural circuit for the pursuit, here, we directly checked the role of the FPA in the interaction between the pursuit and attention. To do it, we applied a dual-task paradigm where an attention demanding task was integrated into the pursuit target and interrupted the FPA using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). In the study, participants were required to pursue a moving circle with a letter inside, which changed to another one every 100 ms and report whether "H" (low attentional load) or one of "H," "S," or "L" (high attentional load) appeared during the trial. As expected, increasing the attentional load decreased accuracy of the letter detection. Importantly, the FPA TMS had no effect on both the pursuit and letter detection tasks in the low load condition, whereas it reduced 200 to 320 ms gain, but tended to increase the letter detection accuracy in the high load condition. Moreover, individual's FPA TMS effect on pursuit gain was significantly correlated with that on letter detection accuracy. Presumably, the pursuit gain control by the FPA was compensated by attention in low load condition, and the FPA may flexibly allocate attentional resources between the pursuit and letter detection task in high load condition. Altogether, it seems that the FPA has a control over attentional allocation between tasks.
注意力与平稳跟踪眼球运动之间的紧密耦合已得到广泛证实，额叶眼区（FEF）是注意力和眼球运动的“枢纽”区域。额叶跟踪区（FPA）是FEF的一个子区域，是跟踪神经回路的一部分，在此，我们直接研究了FPA在跟踪与注意力相互作用中的作用。为此，我们采用了一种双任务范式，即将一项需要注意力的任务整合到跟踪目标中，并使用经颅磁刺激（TMS）干扰FPA。在该研究中，要求参与者跟踪一个内部有字母的移动圆圈，该字母每100毫秒更换一次，并报告在试验过程中是否出现“H”（低注意力负荷）或“H”、“S”或“L”中的一个（高注意力负荷）。正如预期的那样，增加注意力负荷会降低字母检测的准确性。重要的是，在低负荷条件下，FPA的TMS对跟踪和字母检测任务均无影响，而在高负荷条件下，它会降低200至320毫秒的增益，但倾向于提高字母检测的准确性。此外，个体的FPA TMS对跟踪增益的影响与对字母检测准确性的影响显著相关。据推测，在低负荷条件下，FPA对跟踪增益的控制由注意力补偿，而在高负荷条件下，FPA可能会在跟踪和字母检测任务之间灵活分配注意力资源。总之，FPA似乎对任务之间的注意力分配具有控制作用。
