Neural processing of salience and behavioral relevance in visual attentional networks: a spatiotemporal analysis of event-related potentials

Abstract

Objective To investigate the neural processing of stimulus salience and behavioral relevance with spatiotemporal patterns of event-related potentials(ERP). Methods The ERP was recorded from 20 subjects while they performed Eriksen task. Each stimulus picture contained 3 symbols: a central target (grey symbol or X ) represented pressing the corresponding button or withdrawing response respectively. And the flanking distractors were classified by both behavioral relevance ( -facilitory, X -inhibitory, H -irrelevant) and color salience (red, grey). Results Significant interaction effect was found for the reaction time(F(1.85, 35.21)=13.015, P<0.001). Significant difference was found between the salient ((411.91±40.39)ms) and the non-salient ((420.42±38.58)ms) under the facilitory condition(t(19)=-4.858, P<0.001). The significant ERP effects were revealed by statistical parametric mapping of F-value. The saliency effects appeared in the right occipital-temporal regions (100-125 ms), the bilateral dorsal attentional network (DAN) (150-300 ms) and the right-lateralized ventral attentional network (VAN) (300-450 ms). The effects of the behavioral relevance occurred in the occipital regions (150-200 ms), the VAN (200-300 ms) and the DAN (300-600 ms). The interaction effects of behavioral relevance between the target and the distractor occurred in the DAN (200-350 ms). Conclusion The information of the distractor salience and behavioral relevance access VAN and DAN in different stages respectively. The ERP effect in the DAN may be the neural correlation of contingent attentional capture. Key words: Attentional capture; Attentional networks; Salience; Behavioral relevance; Event-related potentials