Value-driven attentional capture enhances distractor representations in early visual cortex.

Sirawaj Itthipuripat,Thomas C Sprague,John T Serences,Vy A Vo,Frank Tong

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000186

Abstract

When a behaviorally relevant stimulus has been previously associated with reward, behavioral responses are faster and more accurate compared to equally relevant but less valuable stimuli. Conversely, task-irrelevant stimuli that were previously associated with a high reward can capture attention and distract processing away from relevant stimuli (e.g., seeing a chocolate bar in the pantry when you are looking for a nice, healthy apple). Although increasing the value of task-relevant stimuli systematically up-regulates neural responses in early visual cortex to facilitate information processing, it is not clear whether the value of task-irrelevant distractors influences behavior via competition in early visual cortex or via competition at later stages of decision-making and response selection. Here, we measured functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in human visual cortex while subjects performed a value-based learning task, and we applied a multivariate inverted encoding model (IEM) to assess the fidelity of distractor representations in early visual cortex. We found that the fidelity of neural representations related to task-irrelevant distractors increased when the distractors were previously associated with a high reward. This finding suggests that value-driven attentional capture begins with sensory modulations of distractor representations in early areas of visual cortex.

Highlights

In most real-world situations, stimuli that are visually salient—such as a camera flash in a theater or a green object in a sea of red—automatically capture attention [1,2,3,4]
Neural signature of value-driven attentional capture in early visual cortex observed when participants had previously selected and learned the value of irrelevant distractors. These results suggest that the influence of high-value distractors on attentional capture begins with an early modulation of sensory responses and that this value-driven attentional capture occurs when participants have learned the value associated with the visual feature of the distractor
Participants learned that different rewards (1 or 9 cents) were associated with the colors of visual stimuli presented at the two target locations

Summary

Introduction

In most real-world situations, stimuli that are visually salient—such as a camera flash in a theater or a green object in a sea of red—automatically capture attention [1,2,3,4]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

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