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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Yuki Kikuchi, Jennifer Ip, Gaetan Lagier, James Mossom, Dr Sukhbinder Kumar, Professor Christopher Petkov, Dr Quoc Vuong
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Efficient perception in natural environments depends on neural interactions between voluntary processes within cognitive control, such as attention, and those that are automatic and subconscious, such as brain adaptation to predictable input (also called repetition suppression). Although both attention and adaptation have been studied separately and there is considerable knowledge of the neurobiology involved in each of these processes, how attention interacts with adaptation remains equivocal. We examined how attention interacts with visual and auditory adaptation by measuring neuroimaging effects consistent with changes in either neural gain or selectivity. Male and female human participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) first while they discriminated repetition of morphed faces or voices and either directed their attention to stimulus identity or spatial location. Attention to face or voice identity, while ignoring stimulus location, solely increased the gain of respectively face- or voice-sensitive cortex. The results were strikingly different in an experiment when participants attended to voice identity versus stimulus loudness. In this case, attention to voice while ignoring sound loudness increased neural selectivity. The combined results show that how attention affects adaptation depends on the level of feature-based competition, reconciling prior conflicting observations. The findings are theoretically important and are discussed in relation to neurobiological interactions between attention and different types of predictive signals.
Author(s): Kikuchi Y, Ip J, Lagier G, Mossom JC, Kumar S, Petkov CI, Barraclough NE, Vuong QC
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: The Journal of Neuroscience
Year: 2019
Volume: 39
Issue: 28
Pages: 5506-5516
Print publication date: 10/07/2019
Online publication date: 08/05/2019
Acceptance date: 07/04/2019
Date deposited: 09/04/2019
ISSN (print): 0270-6474
ISSN (electronic): 1529-2401
Publisher: Society for Neuroscience
URL: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3052-18.2019
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3052-18.2019
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