Brain Activation of Identity Switching in Multiple Identity Tracking Task.

Chuang Lyu,Xuemin Zhang,Liuqing Wei,Thomas Talhelm,Siyuan Hu,Andrea Antal

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0145489

Chuang Lyu, Xuemin Zhang + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145489

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Abstract

When different objects switch identities in the multiple identity tracking (MIT) task, viewers need to rebind objects’ identity and location, which requires attention. This rebinding helps people identify the regions targets are in (where they need to focus their attention) and inhibit unimportant regions (where distractors are). This study investigated the processing of attentional tracking after identity switching in an adapted MIT task. This experiment used three identity-switching conditions: a target-switching condition (where the target objects switched identities), a distractor-switching condition (where the distractor objects switched identities), and a no-switching condition. Compared to the distractor-switching condition, the target-switching condition elicited greater activation in the frontal eye fields (FEF), intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and visual cortex. Compared to the no-switching condition, the target-switching condition elicited greater activation in the FEF, inferior frontal gyrus (pars orbitalis) (IFG-Orb), IPS, visual cortex, middle temporal lobule, and anterior cingulate cortex. Finally, the distractor-switching condition showed greater activation in the IFG-Orb compared to the no-switching condition. These results suggest that, in the target-switching condition, the FEF and IPS (the dorsal attention network) might be involved in goal-driven attention to targets during attentional tracking. In addition, in the distractor-switching condition, the activation of the IFG-Orb may indicate salient change that pulls attention away automatically.

Highlights

Multiple object tracking (MOT) is an effective method used in visual cognitive processing studies of dynamic scenes
MOT tasks focus on visual attention in early cognitive processing, whereas multiple identity tracking (MIT) focuses on later cognitive processing [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
The results showed that the frontal eye fields (FEF) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS) were activated significantly more in the target-switching condition compared to the no-switching condition, and the distractor-switching condition

Summary

Introduction

Multiple object tracking (MOT) is an effective method used in visual cognitive processing studies of dynamic scenes. Researchers have conducted many studies to investigate the cognitive mechanism behind MOT and multiple identity tracking (MIT) since Pylyshyn and Storm [1] first established the MOT paradigm. MOT tasks focus on visual attention in early cognitive processing, whereas MIT focuses on later cognitive processing (e.g., perception and visual short-term or working memory) [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Researchers have paid more attention to how observers dynamically track, perceive, and memorize multiple identities. MIT studies have separated the identity encoding system and the positional encoding system [3]. Behavioral results indicate that people’s identity tracking performance with familiar

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