Spatially Guided Distractor Suppression during Visual Search.

Publisher: Society for Neuroscience Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 8102140 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1529-2401 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 02706474 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Neurosci Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: Washington, DC : Society for Neuroscience
Original Publication: [Baltimore, Md.] : The Society, c1981-

Attention/*physiology ; Evoked Potentials, Visual/*physiology ; Photic Stimulation/*methods ; Reaction Time/*physiology ; Space Perception/*physiology; Adolescent ; Adult ; Electroencephalography/methods ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Visual Perception/physiology ; Young Adult

Past work has demonstrated that active suppression of salient distractors is a critical part of visual selection. Evidence for goal-driven suppression includes below-baseline visual encoding at the position of salient distractors (Gaspelin and Luck, 2018) and neural signals such as the distractor positivity (Pd) that track how many distractors are presented in a given hemifield (Feldmann-Wüstefeld and Vogel, 2019). One basic question regarding distractor suppression is whether it is inherently spatial or nonspatial in character. Indeed, past work has shown that distractors evoke both spatial (Theeuwes, 1992) and nonspatial forms of interference (Folk and Remington, 1998), motivating a direct examination of whether space is integral to goal-driven distractor suppression. Here, we use behavioral and EEG data from adult humans (male and female) to provide clear evidence for a spatial gradient of suppression surrounding salient singleton distractors. Replicating past work, both reaction time and neural indices of target selection improved monotonically as the distance between target and distractor increased. Importantly, these target selection effects were paralleled by a monotonic decline in the amplitude of the Pd, an electrophysiological index of distractor suppression. Moreover, multivariate analyses revealed spatially selective activity in the θ-band that tracked the position of the target and, critically, revealed suppressed activity at spatial channels centered on distractor positions. Thus, goal-driven selection of relevant over irrelevant information benefits from a spatial gradient of suppression surrounding salient distractors. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Past work has shown that distractor suppression is an important part of goal-driven attentional selection, but has not yet revealed whether suppression is spatially directed. Using behavioral data, event-related potentials (ERPs) of the EEG signal [N2pc and distractor positivity (Pd) component], as well as a multivariate model of EEG data [channel tuning functions (CTF)], we show that suppression-related neural activity increases monotonically as the distance between targets and distractors decreases, and that spatially-selective activity in the θ-band reveals depressed activity in spatial channels that index distractor positions. Thus, we provide robust evidence for spatially-guided distractor suppression, a result that has important implications for models of goal-driven attentional control.
(Copyright © 2021 the authors.)

Erratum in: J Neurosci. 2021 Aug 4;41(31):6794. (PMID: 34301832)

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R01 MH087214 United States MH NIMH NIH HHS

Keywords: EEG; Pd; attentional capture; multivariate models; suppression; visual attention

Date Created: 20210303 Date Completed: 20210817 Latest Revision: 20240331

20240331

PMC8026355

10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2418-20.2021

33653697