Abstract
A functional benefit of attention is to proactively enhance perceptual sensitivity in space and time. Although attentional orienting has traditionally been associated with cortico-thalamic networks, recent evidence has shown that individuals with cerebellar degeneration (CD) show a reduced reaction time benefit from cues that enable temporal anticipation. The present study examined whether the cerebellum contributes to the proactive attentional modulation in time of perceptual sensitivity. We tested CD participants on a non-speeded, challenging perceptual discrimination task, asking if they benefit from temporal cues. Strikingly, the CD group showed no duration-specific perceptual sensitivity benefit when cued by repeated but aperiodic presentation of the target interval. In contrast, they performed similar to controls when cued by a rhythmic stream. This dissociation further specifies the functional domain of the cerebellum and establishes its role in the attentional adjustment of perceptual sensitivity in time in addition to its well-documented role in motor timing.
Highlights
Adaptive behavior is facilitated by an attentional system that can proactively modify the state of perceptual systems
Our results provide compelling evidence that the integrity of the human cerebellum is necessary for proactive modulation of perceptual processing based on temporal expectations
The ability to use a temporal cue to enhance perceptual sensitivity at specific times was abolished in individuals with cerebellar degeneration (CD) when prediction was based on an interval cue
Summary
Adaptive behavior is facilitated by an attentional system that can proactively modify the state of perceptual systems. We reported that individuals with cerebellar degeneration (CD) fail to exhibit reaction time benefits from temporal cues on a simple detection task (Breska and Ivry, 2018; Breska and Ivry, 2020) These findings implicate the cerebellum in temporal preparation, but do not enable to determine whether it has a role in attentional modulation of perceptual systems, in motor preparation, or in both. Determining the functional domain of the cerebellum in temporal anticipation is critical to both models of attention and of cerebellar function To address this question, we compared the ability of individuals with CD and healthy controls to use temporal cues to benefit performance in a challenging non-speeded perceptual discrimination task, in which the benefits of attention are assumed to reflect modulation of perceptual sensitivity (Correa et al, 2005; Davranche et al, 2011; Raymond et al, 1992). We employ a similar manipulation in the present study, comparing perceptual benefits from interval and rhythmic temporal cues (Figure 1B)
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