Posner Cueing Task Research Articles

Neurotoxic effects of home radon exposure on oscillatory dynamics serving attentional orienting in children and adolescents

Radon is a naturally occurring gas that contributes significantly to radiation in the environment and is the second leading cause of lung cancer globally. Previous studies have shown that other environmental toxins have deleterious effects on brain development, though radon has not been studied as thoroughly in this context. This study examined the impact of home radon exposure on the neural oscillatory activity serving attention reorientation in youths. Fifty-six participants (ages 6–14 years) completed a classic Posner cuing task during magnetoencephalography (MEG), and home radon levels were measured for each participant. Time-frequency spectrograms indicated stronger theta (3–7 Hz, 300–800 ms), alpha (9–13 Hz, 400–900 ms), and beta responses (14–24 Hz, 400–900 ms) during the task relative to baseline. Source reconstruction of each significant oscillatory response was performed, and validity maps were computed by subtracting the task conditions (invalidly cued – validly cued). These validity maps were examined for associations with radon exposure, age, and their interaction in a linear regression design. Children with greater radon exposure showed aberrant oscillatory activity across distributed regions critical for attentional processing and attention reorientation (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex). Generally, youths with greater radon exposure exhibited a reverse neural validity effect in almost all regions and showed greater overall power relative to peers with lesser radon exposure. We also detected an interactive effect between radon exposure and age where youths with greater radon exposure exhibited divergent developmental trajectories in neural substrates implicated in attentional processing (e.g., bilateral prefrontal cortices, superior temporal gyri, and inferior parietal lobules). These data suggest aberrant, but potentially compensatory neural processing as a function of increasing home radon exposure in areas critical for attention and higher order cognition.

Breathing shifts visuo-spatial attention

Considering recent findings that breathing influences cognitive processes, two experiments explored the relationship between breathing and visuo-spatial attention. In Experiment 1, a lateralized probe detection task was inserted into the breathing cycles of 21 healthy adults to probe effects of breathing on the distribution of spatial attention. In Experiment 2 (N = 26), the Posner cueing task measured breathing-contingent detection speed for lateralized probes after endogenous or exogenous cueing. We consistently found faster responses for left probes after exhalation and for right probes after inhalation in both experiments. Breathing also affected the speed of re-alignment of spatial attention after invalid cueing in Experiment 2. This novel breathing bias shows that our ability to encode visuo-spatial information systematically fluctuates during breathing.

State-dependent effectiveness of cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation on cortical excitability

The extensive use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in experimental and clinical settings does not correspond to an in-depth understanding of its underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. In previous studies, we employed an integrated system of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) to track the effect of tDCS on cortical excitability. At rest, anodal tDCS (a-tDCS) over the right Posterior Parietal Cortex (rPPC) elicits a widespread increase in cortical excitability. In contrast, cathodal tDCS (c-tDCS) fails to modulate cortical excitability, being indistinguishable from sham stimulation.Here we investigated whether an endogenous task-induced activation during stimulation might change this pattern, improving c-tDCS effectiveness in modulating cortical excitability.In Experiment 1, we tested whether performance in a Visuospatial Working Memory Task (VWMT) and a modified Posner Cueing Task (mPCT), involving rPPC, could be modulated by c-tDCS. Thirty-eight participants were involved in a two-session experiment receiving either c-tDCS or sham during tasks execution. In Experiment 2, we recruited sixteen novel participants who performed the same paradigm but underwent TMS-EEG recordings pre- and 10 min post- sham stimulation and c-tDCS.Behavioral results showed that c-tDCS significantly modulated mPCT performance compared to sham. At a neurophysiological level, c-tDCS significantly reduced cortical excitability in a frontoparietal network likely involved in task execution. Taken together, our results provide evidence of the state dependence of c-tDCS in modulating cortical excitability effectively. The conceptual and applicative implications are discussed.

Use of the P300 event-related potential component to index transcranial direct current stimulation effects in drug users

Drug use causes significant social and financial problems and these are exacerbated by difficulties in stopping use and subsequent maintenance of abstinence. There is also difficulty in identifying the beneficial treatment for an individual, made more problematic given the high drop-out rates in treatment programs. Here, the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the amplitude of the P300 event-related potential component, previously suggested to be indicative of successful remission, was measured in recently abstinent amphetamine users. This component was collected during a Posner cuing task which was presented to this group and to control (non-user) participants, using task cues of neutral and drug-related images. The abstinent drug users were divided into two groups, one of which received tDCS daily for five days, with the cathode over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the anode over the right DLPFC, and one receiving sham stimulation over the same time period. Behavioral performance and P300 amplitudes were measured before and after the period of tDCS delivery. Control participants were tested with the same time-schedule of task presentation but without administration of tDCS. Drug users initially showed a larger cost of invalid cues on task performance compared to control (non-drug user) participants and this was reduced following delivery of tDCS. Additionally, tDCS resulted in increased amplitude of the P300 component, significantly so for neutral cues, with the resulting pattern being more similar to that of the non-users. This provides a good basis for further investigation of both the utility of tDCS in modulation of cognition in addict groups, and to investigate the effects of modulating the P300 component on remission rates, a relationship that seems to be the case for this measure without use of tDCS modulation. Importantly, this study also provides a further addiction group showing P300 amplitude modulation as a result of tDCS administration.

Monocular eye patching modulates reorienting of covert attention in patients with unilateral middle cerebral artery stroke

Unilateral brain lesions can lead to impaired contralesional attention and reduced ipsilesional and enhanced contralesional superior colliculus (SC) activity. We aimed to investigate whether modulation of SC activation via monocular eye patching can improve contralesional attention. Twenty left-hemispheric (LH) and 20 right-hemispheric (RH) patients with an acute or subacute middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke completed an endogenous version of the Posner cueing task twice, while the left or right eye was covered with an eye patch. The LH and RH patients showed significantly slower reactions to contralesional than to ipsilesional stimuli. In addition, the eye patch modulated responses to invalidly but not those to validly cued stimuli. Post hoc analyses could not discriminate whether this effect pertained to a particular target side or eye patch position. However, exploratory analyses indicated that the observed eye patch effect might affect the RH group more than the LH group. As predicted 36 years ago, monocular eye patching modulates visuospatial attention, presumably due to differences in SC activation between the two eye patch conditions. However, this modulation seems too weak and unspecific, and therefore possibly not strong enough to be a treatment option for patients with visuospatial attention impairments.

Metabolic syndrome and cognitive deficits in the Greek cohort of Epirus Health Study

BackgroundMetabolic syndrome is considered an important risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia. However, the evidence in middle-aged individuals is still conflicting. The aim of the study was to explore the association between metabolic syndrome and its individual components with cognitive function and to investigate possible interaction between sex, age and genetic predisposition for metabolic syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease in a middle-aged Greek cohort.MethodsA total of 2,077 healthy adults (mean age: 46.7 years) were included in the primary cross-sectional analysis and 305 of them in secondary prospective analyses. Metabolic syndrome was defined by the revised National Cholesterol Education-Adult Treatment Panel III and the International Diabetes Federation criteria. Cognitive function was measured primarily with the Trail Making, Verbal fluency and Logical Memory test, and in secondary prospective analyses with online versions of Posner cueing task, an emotional recognition task, Corsi block-tapping task and Stroop task.ResultsMultivariable linear regressions showed an association of metabolic syndrome with lower performance in attention (β=1.62 seconds, 95% CI=0.20, 3.04) and memory (β=-0.62 words, 95% CI=-1.19, -0.05) that could be driven by associations with elevated fasting glucose and abdominal obesity. Similar associations were observed in the secondary prospective analyses.ConclusionIn summary, metabolic syndrome was associated with cognitive deficits in domains related with the cognitive profile of vascular cognitive impairment.

Attention relieves visual crowding: Dissociable effects of peripheral and central cues.

Visual crowding can be reduced when attention is directed to the target by peripheral cues. However, it is unclear whether central cues relieve visual crowding to the same extent as peripheral cues. In this study, we combined the Posner cueing task and the crowding task to investigate the effect of exogenous and endogenous attention on crowding. In Experiment 1, five different stimulus-onset asychronies (SOAs) between the cue and the target and a predictive validity of 100% were adopted. Both attentional cues were shown to significantly reduce the effect of visual crowding, but the peripheral cue was more effective than the central cue. Furthermore, peripheral cues started to relieve visual crowding at the shortest SOA (100 ms), whereas central cues worked only at later SOAs (275 ms or above). When the predictive validity of the cue was decreased to 70% in Experiment 2, similar results to Experiment 1 were found, but the valid cue was less effective in reducing crowding than that in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, when the predictive validity was decreased to 50%, a valid peripheral cue improved performance but a valid central cue did not, suggesting that endogenous attention but not exogenous attention can be voluntarily controlled when the cues are not predictive of the target's location. These findings collectively suggest that both peripheral and central cues can alleviate crowding, but they differ in terms of strength, time dynamics, and flexibility of voluntary control.

Spatial attention to social information in poker: A neuropsychological study using the Posner cueing paradigm.

This research aimed to characterize social information processing abilities in a population of regular nondisordered poker players compared to controls. Participants completed the Posner cueing paradigm task including social cues (faces) to assess attention allocation towards social stimuli, including the effect of the presentation time (subliminal vs supraliminal) and of the emotion displayed. The study included two groups of participants: 30 regular nondisordered poker players (those who played at least three times a week in Texas Hold'em poker games for at least three months) and 30 control participants (those who did not gamble or gambled less than once a month, whatever the game). The group of regular nondisordered poker players displayed anenhancement of the inhibition of return during the Posner cueing task. This means that in valid trials, they took longer to respond to the already processed localization in supraliminal conditions compared to controls. However, our results did not evidence any particular engagement or disengagement attention abilities toward specific types of emotion. These results suggest that regular nondisordered poker players displayed social information processing abilities, which may be due to the importance to efficiently process social information that can serve as tells in live poker. The observed enhancement of the inhibition of return may permit poker players to not process a localization that has already processed to save attentional resources. Further research regarding the establishment of the IOR in other forms of gambling and with non-social cues needs to be performed.

Impact of Affordances on Inhibition of Return is moderated by ADHD

Visual attention is essential to performing functional tasks such as reaching out and picking up a cup of coffee from the table. To what extent is attention in individuals diagnosed with ADHD affected during such tasks? What factors influence attention in functional tasks that relate to goal-directed behaviour (i.e. affordances) is largely unknown. Researchers have used the cognitive mechanism of inhibition of return to investigate how attention works. Pragmatic inhibition of return occurs when the affordances, or pragmatic features, of the object are presented repeatedly as both cue and target stimuli, and suppress processing of similar information in the future to facilitate identification of novel stimuli. In the present study, pragmatic inhibition of return was examined by using “preferred” and “non-preferred” stimuli in the Posner cueing task in order to determine whether the stimulus with a more salient or obvious affordance would show a greater inhibition of return effect. The preferred stimuli were a soccer ball being kicked and a tennis ball being hit with a racket. The non-preferred stimuli were a soccer ball being hit by a racket and a tennis ball being kicked with the foot. Both the ADHD group and the control group exhibited inhibition of return, but the ADHD group was affected at later time delays following a cue stimulus. This suggests that the difference between ADHD and normal controls is a consequence of straightforward temporal delay, and not necessarily related to differences in the nature of attentional processing.

Revisiting the role of visual working memory in attentional control settings

ABSTRACT Observers adopt attentional control setting (ACS) based on their goals; stimuli that match the current goal will capture attention, whereas stimuli that do not match the current goal will not. In the present study, we revisited the role of VWM in maintaining ACSs capable of guiding attentional capture. Participants completed a Posner cueing task while either remembering a colour (Experiments 1a/1b) or searching for a colour (Experiments 2/3). To encourage the use of VWM, the colour changed on each trial. Results indicate that merely remembering a colour using VWM did not prevent memory non-matching colours from capturing attention (Experiments 1a/1b). Conversely, when participants searched for one colour, VWM supported an ACS that eliminated capture by non-matching colours (Experiments 2/3), though not if participants searched for two colours (Experiment 3). We conclude that VWM can maintain an ACS of one searched-for item that is capable of guiding attentional capture.

Diagnostic Tools for Children with Severe Multiple Developmental Disorders: Eye-tracking and Eelectroencephalogram Approaches

Two pilot studies of children with profound damages of central nervous system were conducted by using eye-tracking. Design of electroencephalographic event related potentials (ERP) study is proposed.We aimed to test different approaches for diagnostic of this clinical group using eye-tracking and electroencephalography.First study was an attempt to adopt classical diagnostic tool with verbal instruction to presentation on tablet with integrated eye-tracker. The result of this study reveals that it is impossible to use standard tools for very impaired children. Furthermore, we proposed several factors that could be crucial for eye-tracking tasks performance.In the second study we tried to avoid tasks that require verbal instruction and voluntary control. Visual search task and Posner cuing task were presented trough tablet with integrated eye-tracker. No reliable records of gaze were obtained in this study.Planning study is developed for using of ERP for diagnostic. We proposed that ERP passive oddball paradigm may allow us to examine psychological state and cognitive process of children.In the end we discussed the conditions and requirements for both approach application in diagnostic children with severe multiple developmental disorders.

Regular recreational Cannabis users exhibit altered neural oscillatory dynamics during attention reorientation.

Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States and is often associated with changes in attention function, which may ultimately impact numerous other cognitive faculties (e.g. memory, executive function). Importantly, despite the increasing rates of cannabis use and widespread legalization in the United States, the neural mechanisms underlying attentional dysfunction in chronic users are poorly understood. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) and a modified Posner cueing task in 21 regular cannabis users and 32 demographically matched non-user controls. MEG data were imaged in the time-frequency domain using a beamformer and peak voxel time series were extracted to quantify the oscillatory dynamics underlying use-related aberrations in attentional reorienting, as well as the impact on spontaneous neural activity immediately preceding stimulus onset. Behavioral performance on the task (e.g. reaction time) was similar between regular cannabis users and non-user controls. However, the neural data indicated robust theta-band synchronizations across a distributed network during attentional reorienting, with activity in the bilateral inferior frontal gyri being markedly stronger in users relative to controls (p's < 0.036). Additionally, we observed significantly reduced spontaneous theta activity across this distributed network during the pre-stimulus baseline in cannabis users relative to controls (p's < 0.020). Despite similar performance on the task, we observed specific alterations in the neural dynamics serving attentional reorienting in regular cannabis users compared to controls. These data suggest that regular cannabis users may employ compensatory processing in the prefrontal cortices to efficiently reorient their attention relative to non-user controls.

Humor and Hunger Affect the Response Toward Food Cues.

The omnipresence of food cues in everyday life has been linked to troubled eating behavior and rising rates of obesity. While extended research has been conducted on the effects of negative emotions and stress on food consumption, very little is known about how positive emotions affect eating and particularly attention toward food cues. In the present study, we investigated whether humor impacts attentional bias toward food and whether it will affect preferences for healthy and unhealthy food items, depending on the hunger state. To do so, a group of randomly assigned participants watched funny video clips (humor group, N = 46) or neutral ones (control group, N = 49). Afterwards, they performed a modified Posner cueing task with low or high caloric food images serving as cues. We found a significant group × hunger interaction. Compared to the control group, the humor group responded more slowly to food cues when hungry, whereas the opposite was true when participants were satiated. Additionally, our results suggest that hunger possibly directs attention away from healthy food cues and toward unhealthy ones. No group differences were found with respect to food preferences and engagement and disengagement of attention. We discuss the potential of humor in counteracting aversive consequences of hunger on attention allocation toward food. We propose an underlying mechanism involving a combined reduction in cortisol levels and a decrease in activation of the reward system. However, given the novelty of the findings, further research is warranted, both to replicate the results as well as to investigate the suggested underlying processes.

Differences in Rhythmic Neural Activity Supporting the Temporal and Spatial Cueing of Attention.

The neural processes serving the orienting of attention toward goal-relevant stimuli are generally examined with informative cues that direct visual attention to a spatial location. However, cues predicting the temporal emergence of an object are also known to be effective in attentional orienting but are implemented less often. Differences in the neural oscillatory dynamics supporting these divergent types of attentional orienting have only rarely been examined. In this study, we utilized magnetoencephalography and an adapted Posner cueing task to investigate the spectral specificity of neural oscillations underlying these different types of attentional orienting (i.e., spatial vs. temporal). We found a spectral dissociation of attentional cueing, such that alpha (10-16Hz) oscillations were central to spatial orienting and theta (3-6Hz) oscillations were critical to temporal orienting. Specifically, we observed robust decreases in alpha power during spatial orienting in key attention areas (i.e., lateral occipital, posterior cingulate, and hippocampus), along with strong theta increases during temporal orienting in the primary visual cortex. These results suggest that the oscillatory dynamics supporting attentional orienting are spectrally and anatomically specific, such that spatial orienting is served by stronger alpha oscillations in attention regions, whereas temporal orienting is associated with stronger theta responses in visual sensory regions.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex modulates visuospatial distractor suppression.

Visual selective attention allows us to filter relevant inputs from irrelevant inputs during visual processing. In contrast to rich research exploring how the brain facilitates task‐relevant inputs, less is known about how the brain suppresses irrelevant inputs. In this study, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate the causal role of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a crucial brain area for attentional control, in distractor suppression. Specifically, 10‐Hz repetitive TMS (rTMS) was applied to the right DLPFC and Vertex at the stimuli onset (stimuli‐onset TMS) or 500 ms prior to the stimuli onset (prestimuli TMS). In a variant of the Posner cueing task, participants were instructed to identify the shape of a white target while ignoring a white or colored distractor whose location was either cued in advance or uncued. As anticipated, either the location cue or the colored distractor led to faster responses. Notably, the location cueing effect was eliminated by stimuli‐onset TMS to the right DLPFC, but not by prestimuli TMS. Further analyses showed that stimuli‐onset TMS quickened responses to uncued trials, and this TMS effect was derived from the inhibition at the distractor in both visual fields. In addition, TMS over the right DLPFC had no specific effect on the colored distractor compared to the white one. Considered collectively, these findings indicate that the DLPFC plays a crucial role in visuospatial distractor suppression and acts upon stimuli presentation. Besides, it seems the DLPFC contributes more to location‐based distractor suppression than to color‐based one.

Affective priming enhances gaze cueing effect.

Other's gaze direction triggers a reflexive shift of attention known as the gaze cueing effect. Fearful facial expressions are further reported to enhance the gaze cueing effect, but it remains unclear whether this facilitative effect is specific to gaze cues or the result of more general increase in attentional resources resulting from affective arousal. We examined the effects of affective priming on the cueing effects of gaze and arrow stimuli in the Posner cueing task. Participants were primed with two types of briefly presented affective stimuli (neutral, threatening), and the target location was cued either by an arrow or a gaze cue in a neutral face. Gaze cues were preceded by the same face with its eyes closed or directed to the viewer. Study 1 (n = 26) assessed the cueing effect using manual key press, and Study 2 (n = 30) employed gaze-contingent eye tracking techniques to assess the cueing effect using time to first fixate the cued target location. Both studies found that threatening priming significantly enhanced the cueing effects of eye gaze but not arrow stimuli. The results therefore suggest that affective priming does not facilitate general attentional orienting, but the facilitation is more specific to social cues such as eye gaze. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Alertness Training Improves Spatial Bias and Functional Ability in Spatial Neglect.

We conducted a multisite, randomized, double-blinded, controlled trial to examine the effectiveness of a digital health intervention targeting the intrinsic regulation of goal-directed alertness in patients with chronic hemispatial neglect. Forty-nine participants with hemispatial neglect, who demonstrated significant spatially biased attention after acquired brain injury, were randomly assigned to the experimental attention remediation treatment or the active control group. The participants engaged with the remotely administered interventions for 12 weeks. The primary outcome was spatial bias on the Posner cueing task (response time difference: left minus right target trials). Secondary outcomes included functional abilities (measured via the Catherine Bergego scale and Barthel index), spatial cognition, executive function, quality of life, and sleep. Assessments were conducted before and immediately after participation in the experimental intervention or control condition, and again after a 3-month no-contact period. Compared with the active control group, the intervention group exhibited a significant improvement in the primary outcome, a reduction in spatially biased attention on the Posner cueing task (p = 0.010, Cohen's d = 0.96), in addition to significant improvements in functional abilities as measured on the Catherine Bergego and Barthel indices (p = 0.027, Cohen's d = 0.24). Our results demonstrate that our attention training program was effective in improving the debilitating attention deficits common to hemispatial neglect. This benefit generalized to improvements in real-world functional abilities. This safe, highly scalable, and self-administered treatment for hemispatial neglect might serve as a useful addition to the existing standard of care. ANN NEUROL 2020;88:747-758.

Impairment in Attention Focus During the Posner Cognitive Task in Children With ADHD: An Eye Tracker Study.

Attention is a major cognitive function that allows the individuals to focus selectively on a discrete stimulus while ignoring others. Visual information could be driven endogenously, when the goals or desires are voluntary, or exogenously, in response to salient visual events in the environment. Since subjects with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show heightened distractibility during activities that require significant attentional engagement, we hypothesized that they may be more severely impaired in their ability to perform endogenous tasks than controls. To elicit endogenous and exogenous shifts of attention, we thus used a modified version of Posner's cueing task. We compared oculomotor performance measured by an eye tracker in a group of 31 children with ADHD (mean age = 9.1 ± 1.3 years) and age-, sex-, and IQ-matched typically developing children. Endogenous and exogenous conditions were explored in three distinct visual sub-conditions (valid, invalid, and neutral). We found that children with ADHD showed longer latency during endogenous conditions compared to TD children in invalid sub-conditions. They also performed more errors than controls, during the endogenous task in neutral sub-conditions and during exogenous task in neutral and invalid sub-conditions. Our study suggests that children with ADHD may allocate their attention resource toward the detection of exogenous targets with a deficit in their ability to perform endogenous task. We suggest also that they have a difficulty in the engagement of the inhibitory control system particularly during voluntary saccade performance. This could result from impaired interactions between the ventral and dorsal attention networks as well as in the frontal eye field, although neuroimaging studies are necessary to validate this hypothesis in the ADHD population.

Pupillary and behavioral markers of alerting and orienting: An individual difference approach

Measuring task-evoked pupillary (TEP) responses as an index of phasic activity in the locus coeruleus (LC), we examined two competing hypotheses regarding the alerting and orienting mechanisms of attention. According to a dual mechanism account (Fernandez-Duque & Posner, 1997), two separate noradrenergic and cholinergic mechanisms modulate, respectively, the alerting and orienting effects. However, Corbetta and colleagues (2008) proposed that LC phasic activity may also be involved in orienting effect through its functional relationship with the ventral attentional network. We recruited seventy-five healthy Norwegian participants to perform a Posner cueing task. Both behavioral and pupillary responses revealed the alerting effect. Also, both behavioral and pupillary responses indicated that cued attention is affected by age. Behavioral responses also revealed orienting effect However, we found no TEP differences between valid, invalid, and neutral conditions, suggesting that TEP effects were driven by the alerting effect of cue presentation. Moreover, both behavioral and pupillary estimates of alertness and orienting were uncorrelated. Finally, individual differences in general cognitive abilities did not appear to affect the orienting and alerting mechanisms. This pattern of results is consistent with the dual mechanism account of attention. However, the LC involvement in the (re)orienting attention may be driven by state-specific factors.

Distinct neural substrates underlying target facilitation and distractor suppression: A combined voxel-based morphometry and resting-state functional connectivity study

Selective attention, the ability to filter relevant from a sea of sensory information, relies on the prioritization of goal-relevant information (target facilitation) and the suppression of goal-irrelevant information (distractor suppression). Although several lines of evidence have shown that target facilitation and distractor suppression were mediated by distinct mechanisms, the underlying neural substrates remain unclear. To address this question, we acquired structural and resting-state magnetic resonance imaging scans, as well as behavioral data from a modified Posner cueing task. Specifically, the location of a target (Target Cue, TC) and a distractor (Distractor Cue, DC) was either cued in advance to separately trigger target facilitation and distractor suppression, or no predictive information was provided, serving as a baseline. We combined voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analyses to explore the neural correlates of behavioral benefits, yielding the following results. First, behavioral data showed faster responses to TC and DC conditions compared to baseline, the benefits of which were named TC-benefit and DC-benefit. Second, the VBM analysis revealed that the gray matter volume (GMV) in the superior frontal (SFG) and postcentral gyrus inversely correlated with individual TC-benefit, while the GMV in the superior parietal lobe, middle frontal gyrus, and angular gyrus inversely correlated with individual DC-benefit, indicating that target facilitation and distractor suppression was associated with the GMV of distinct and distributed regions in the frontoparietal cortex. Third, the rsFC analysis with the SFG as a seed region further found distinct patterns of rsFC for target facilitation and distractor suppression. Specifically, individual TC-benefit were positively correlated with distributed connections between the SFG and brain regions, mainly within the ventral attention and somato-motor network; but individual DC-benefit were positively correlated with centralized connections between the SFG and brain regions, mainly within the frontoparietal, dorsal attention and ventral attention network. Finally, a multiple linear regression analysis showed that the GMV and rsFC could jointly explain individual differences in TC- and DC-benefit. Taken together, these results provided neural evidence for different structural and functional substrates underlying target facilitation and distractor suppression.