Departments of Psychology, Economics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, United States.
Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics, Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Elife. 2021 Nov 15;10:e67477. doi: 10.7554/eLife.67477.
Recent studies have suggested close functional links between overt visual attention and decision making. This suggests that the corresponding mechanisms may interface in brain regions known to be crucial for guiding visual attention - such as the frontal eye field (FEF). Here, we combined brain stimulation, eye tracking, and computational approaches to explore this possibility. We show that inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the right FEF has a causal impact on decision making, reducing the effect of gaze dwell time on choice while also increasing reaction times. We computationally characterize this putative mechanism by using the attentional drift diffusion model (aDDM), which reveals that FEF inhibition reduces the relative discounting of the non-fixated option in the comparison process. Our findings establish an important causal role of the right FEF in choice, elucidate the underlying mechanism, and provide support for one of the key causal hypotheses associated with the aDDM.
最近的研究表明，明显的视觉注意力和决策之间存在密切的功能联系。这表明相应的机制可能在大脑区域相互作用，这些区域已知对于引导视觉注意力至关重要，例如额眼区（FEF）。在这里，我们结合了脑刺激、眼动追踪和计算方法来探索这种可能性。我们表明，右侧 FEF 的抑制性经颅磁刺激（TMS）对决策有因果影响，减少了注视停留时间对选择的影响，同时也增加了反应时间。我们通过使用注意力漂移扩散模型（aDDM）对这个假设机制进行了计算表征，该模型揭示了 FEF 抑制减少了比较过程中非注视选项的相对折扣。我们的发现确立了右侧 FEF 在选择中的重要因果作用，阐明了潜在的机制，并为与 aDDM 相关的关键因果假设之一提供了支持。
