Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India.
Foundation of Art and Health India, Bangalore, 560066, India.
Nat Commun. 2024 Aug 13;15(1):6938. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-51283-z.
Attention facilitates behavior by enhancing perceptual sensitivity (sensory processing) and choice bias (decisional weighting) for attended information. Whether distinct neural substrates mediate these distinct components of attention remains unknown. We investigate the causal role of key nodes of the right posterior parietal cortex (rPPC) in the forebrain attention network in sensitivity versus bias control. Two groups of participants performed a cued attention task while we applied either inhibitory, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (n = 28) or 40 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation (n = 26) to the dorsal rPPC. We show that rPPC stimulation - with either modality - impairs task performance by selectively altering attentional modulation of bias but not sensitivity. Specifically, participants' bias toward the uncued, but not the cued, location reduced significantly following rPPC stimulation - an effect that was consistent across both neurostimulation cohorts. In sum, the dorsal rPPC causally mediates the reorienting of choice bias, one particular component of visual spatial attention.
注意通过增强被注意信息的感知敏感性（感觉处理）和选择偏差（决策权重）来促进行为。但是，尚不清楚是否有不同的神经基质来介导注意的这些不同成分。我们研究了右后顶叶皮层（rPPC）的关键节点在大脑前注意网络中对敏感性与偏差控制的因果作用。两组参与者在执行提示注意任务时，我们对背侧 rPPC 施加了抑制性重复经颅磁刺激（n=28）或 40 Hz 经颅交流电刺激（n=26）。我们表明，rPPC 刺激——无论是哪种模式——通过选择性地改变偏差的注意调节而不是敏感性来损害任务表现。具体来说，在 rPPC 刺激后，参与者对未提示但不是提示的位置的偏向显著降低 - 这种效应在两个神经刺激队列中都是一致的。总之，背侧 rPPC 因果地介导了选择偏差的重新定向，这是视觉空间注意的一个特定成分。
