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

• Published in: PLoS biology Vol. 17; no. 8; p. e3000186
• Main Authors: Itthipuripat, Sirawaj, Vo, Vy A, Sprague, Thomas C, Serences, John T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 09-08-2019; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Accuracy; Adult; Analysis; Attention; Attention - physiology; Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Behavior; Biology and Life Sciences; Brain Mapping; Chocolate; Competition; Cortex (somatosensory); Data processing; Decision making; Experimental psychology; Female; Fidelity; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Humans; Information processing; Laboratories; Learning - physiology; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Neuroimaging; Neurosciences; Photic Stimulation; Psychology; Reaction Time - physiology; Reinforcement; Representations; Research and Analysis Methods; Reward; Sensory stimulation; Social Sciences; Software; Visual cortex; Visual Cortex - physiology; Visual Perception - physiology; Visual stimuli; United States; New York; La Jolla California; Santa Barbara California; United States > US; California; Thailand; Bangkok Thailand
• ISSN: 1545-7885; 1544-9173; 1545-7885
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000186

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.