Value-driven attentional capture enhances distractor representations in early visual cortex

Itthipuripat, Sirawaj and Vo, Vy A. and Sprague, Thomas C. and Serences, John T. and Tong, Frank (2019) Value-driven attentional capture enhances distractor representations in early visual cortex. PLOS Biology, 17 (8). e3000186. ISSN 1545-7885

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Abstract

When a behaviorally relevant stimulus has been previously associated with reward, behavioral responses are faster and more accurate compared to equally relevant but less valuable stimuli. Conversely, task-irrelevant stimuli that were previously associated with a high reward can capture attention and distract processing away from relevant stimuli (e.g., seeing a chocolate bar in the pantry when you are looking for a nice, healthy apple). Although increasing the value of task-relevant stimuli systematically up-regulates neural responses in early visual cortex to facilitate information processing, it is not clear whether the value of task-irrelevant distractors influences behavior via competition in early visual cortex or via competition at later stages of decision-making and response selection. Here, we measured functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in human visual cortex while subjects performed a value-based learning task, and we applied a multivariate inverted encoding model (IEM) to assess the fidelity of distractor representations in early visual cortex. We found that the fidelity of neural representations related to task-irrelevant distractors increased when the distractors were previously associated with a high reward. This finding suggests that value-driven attentional capture begins with sensory modulations of distractor representations in early areas of visual cortex.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Research Asian Plos > Biological Science
Depositing User: Unnamed user with email support@research.asianplos.com
Date Deposited: 28 Jan 2023 09:53
Last Modified: 19 Oct 2024 05:41
URI: http://abstract.stmdigitallibrary.com/id/eprint/21

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