Stimulus specific cortical activity associated with ignoring distraction during working memory encoding and maintenance

Distraction disrupts Working Memory (WM) performance, but how the brain filters distraction is not known. One possibility is that neural activity associated with distractions is suppressed relative to a baseline/passive task (biased competition). Alternatively, distraction may be denied access to WM...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 8952
Main Authors:	Ashton, Charlotte, Gouws, Andre D., Glennon, Marcus, Das, Abhishek, Chen, Yit-Keat, Chrisp, Charlotte, Felek, Ismail, Zanto, Theodore P., McNab, Fiona
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group UK 02-06-2023 Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio
Subjects:	631/378 631/477 Attention Brain mapping Competition Functional magnetic resonance imaging Gating Humanities and Social Sciences Medical imaging Memory multidisciplinary Neuroimaging Science Science (multidisciplinary) Sensory perception Short term memory
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Distraction disrupts Working Memory (WM) performance, but how the brain filters distraction is not known. One possibility is that neural activity associated with distractions is suppressed relative to a baseline/passive task (biased competition). Alternatively, distraction may be denied access to WM, with no suppression. Furthermore, behavioural work indicates separate mechanisms for ignoring distractions which occur (1) while we put information into WM (Encoding Distraction, ED) and (2) while we maintain already encoded information during the WM delay period (Delay Distraction, DD). Here we used fMRI in humans to measure category-sensitive cortical activity and probe the extent to which ED/DD mechanisms involve enhancement/suppression during a WM task. We observed significant enhancement of task-relevant activity, relative to a passive view task, which did not differ according to whether or when distractors appeared. For both ED and DD we found no evidence of suppression, but instead a robust increase in stimulus specific activity in response to additional stimuli presented during the passive view task, which was not seen for the WM task, when those additional stimuli were to be ignored. The results indicate that ED/DD resistance does not necessarily involve suppression of distractor-related activity. Rather, a rise in distractor-associated activity is prevented when distractors are presented, supporting models of input gating, and providing a potential mechanism by which input-gating might be achieved.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	2045-2322 2045-2322
DOI:	10.1038/s41598-023-34967-2