Distinct neural mechanisms of distractor suppression in the frontal and parietal lobe

By Mototaka Suzuki, Jacqueline Gottlieb. 2012

264 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The posterior parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex are associated with eye movements and visual attention, but their specific contributions are poorly understood. We compared the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) in monkeys using a memory saccade task in which a salient distractor flashed at a variable timing and location during the memory delay. We found that the two areas had similar responses to target selection, but made distinct contributions to distractor suppression. Distractor responses were more strongly suppressed and more closely correlated with performance in the dlPFC relative to LIP. Moreover, reversible inactivation of the dlPFC produced much larger increases in distractibility than inactivation of LIP. These findings suggest that LIP and dlPFC mediate different aspects of selective attention. Although both areas can contribute to the perceptual selection of salient information, the dlPFC has a decisive influence on whether and how attended stimulus is linked with actions.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Ian C. Fiebelkorn
2. Sabine Kastner
3. Joy J. Geng
4. Luiz Pessoa
5. Justin Riddle

Citations in the corpus

• Attentional Mechanisms of Distractor Suppression (2014, background): “The abrupt onset produces a salient percept that frequently captures the first saccadic eye movement; for instance, in Godijn and Theeuwes’s (2002) Experiment 1, this occurred on 28.5% of trials.”
• Distractor anticipation during working memory is associated with theta and beta oscillations across spatial scales (2024, unknown): “This is similar to a previous study showing that LPFC neurons suppress their spiking activity in anticipation of a distractor, with the strongest suppression occurring when the distractor was displayed farthest from remembered target location (Suzuki and Gottlieb, 2013).”
• Functional Specialization in the Attention Network (2019, background): “For example, responses to distractors are more strongly suppressed in the frontal than in the parietal cortex, and inactivations of the frontal cortex are associated with a larger increase in distractibility than inactivations of the parietal cortex (Suzuki & Gottlieb 2013).”