A source for category-induced global effects of feature-based attention in human prefrontal cortex
Ling Huang,
Jingyi Wang,
Qionghua He,
Chu Li,
Yueling Sun,
Carol A. Seger,
Xilin Zhang
Affiliations
Ling Huang
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
Jingyi Wang
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
Qionghua He
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
Chu Li
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
Yueling Sun
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
Carol A. Seger
School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China; Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA
Xilin Zhang
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China; Corresponding author
Summary: Global effects of feature-based attention (FBA) are generally limited to stimuli sharing the same or similar features, as hypothesized in the “feature-similarity gain model.” Visual perception, however, often reflects categories acquired via experience/learning; whether the global-FBA effect can be induced by the categorized features remains unclear. Here, human subjects were trained to classify motion directions into two discrete categories and perform a classical motion-based attention task. We found a category-induced global-FBA effect in both the middle temporal area (MT+) and frontoparietal areas, where attention to a motion direction globally spread to unattended motion directions within the same category, but not to those in a different category. Effective connectivity analysis showed that the category-induced global-FBA effect in MT+ was derived by feedback from the inferior frontal junction (IFJ). Altogether, our study reveals a category-induced global-FBA effect and identifies a source for this effect in human prefrontal cortex, implying that FBA is of greater ecological significance than previously thought.
