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Prefrontal Control of Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms of Visual Suppression

In everyday life, we are continuously struggling at focusing on our current goals while at the same time avoiding distractions. Attention is the neuro-cognitive process devoted to the selection of behaviorally relevant sensory information while at the same time preventing distraction by irrelevant i...

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Autores principales: Di Bello, Fabio, Ben Hadj Hassen, Sameh, Astrand, Elaine, Ben Hamed, Suliann
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9247412/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34734977
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab378
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author Di Bello, Fabio
Ben Hadj Hassen, Sameh
Astrand, Elaine
Ben Hamed, Suliann
author_facet Di Bello, Fabio
Ben Hadj Hassen, Sameh
Astrand, Elaine
Ben Hamed, Suliann
author_sort Di Bello, Fabio
collection PubMed
description In everyday life, we are continuously struggling at focusing on our current goals while at the same time avoiding distractions. Attention is the neuro-cognitive process devoted to the selection of behaviorally relevant sensory information while at the same time preventing distraction by irrelevant information. Distraction can be prevented proactively, by strategically prioritizing task-relevant information at the expense of irrelevant information, or reactively, by suppressing the ongoing processing of distractors. The distinctive neuronal signature of these suppressive mechanisms is still largely unknown. Thanks to machine-learning decoding methods applied to prefrontal cortical activity, we monitor the dynamic spatial attention with an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. We first identify independent behavioral and neuronal signatures for long-term (learning-based spatial prioritization) and short-term (dynamic spatial attention) mechanisms. We then identify distinct behavioral and neuronal signatures for proactive and reactive suppression mechanisms. We find that while distracting task-relevant information is suppressed proactively, task-irrelevant information is suppressed reactively. Critically, we show that distractor suppression, whether proactive or reactive, strongly depends on the implementation of both long-term and short-term mechanisms of selection. Overall, we provide a unified neuro-cognitive framework describing how the prefrontal cortex deals with distractors in order to flexibly optimize behavior in dynamic environments.
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spelling pubmed-92474122022-07-05 Prefrontal Control of Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms of Visual Suppression Di Bello, Fabio Ben Hadj Hassen, Sameh Astrand, Elaine Ben Hamed, Suliann Cereb Cortex Original Article In everyday life, we are continuously struggling at focusing on our current goals while at the same time avoiding distractions. Attention is the neuro-cognitive process devoted to the selection of behaviorally relevant sensory information while at the same time preventing distraction by irrelevant information. Distraction can be prevented proactively, by strategically prioritizing task-relevant information at the expense of irrelevant information, or reactively, by suppressing the ongoing processing of distractors. The distinctive neuronal signature of these suppressive mechanisms is still largely unknown. Thanks to machine-learning decoding methods applied to prefrontal cortical activity, we monitor the dynamic spatial attention with an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. We first identify independent behavioral and neuronal signatures for long-term (learning-based spatial prioritization) and short-term (dynamic spatial attention) mechanisms. We then identify distinct behavioral and neuronal signatures for proactive and reactive suppression mechanisms. We find that while distracting task-relevant information is suppressed proactively, task-irrelevant information is suppressed reactively. Critically, we show that distractor suppression, whether proactive or reactive, strongly depends on the implementation of both long-term and short-term mechanisms of selection. Overall, we provide a unified neuro-cognitive framework describing how the prefrontal cortex deals with distractors in order to flexibly optimize behavior in dynamic environments. Oxford University Press 2021-11-04 /pmc/articles/PMC9247412/ /pubmed/34734977 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab378 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Original Article
Di Bello, Fabio
Ben Hadj Hassen, Sameh
Astrand, Elaine
Ben Hamed, Suliann
Prefrontal Control of Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms of Visual Suppression
title Prefrontal Control of Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms of Visual Suppression
title_full Prefrontal Control of Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms of Visual Suppression
title_fullStr Prefrontal Control of Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms of Visual Suppression
title_full_unstemmed Prefrontal Control of Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms of Visual Suppression
title_short Prefrontal Control of Proactive and Reactive Mechanisms of Visual Suppression
title_sort prefrontal control of proactive and reactive mechanisms of visual suppression
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9247412/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34734977
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab378
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