Dual-format attentional template during preparation in human visual cortex
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, China
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, United States
- Liangzhu Laboratory, MOE Frontier Science Center for Brain Science and Brain-machine Integration, State Key Laboratory of Brain-machine Intelligence, Zhejiang University, China
- Department of Neurobiology, Affiliated Mental Health Center & Hangzhou Seventh People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, China
- NHC and CAMS Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, Zhejiang University, China
- Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Figures
Figure 1
Experiment procedure and behavioral performance.
(A) Attention tasks in the No-Ping and Ping sessions. Note that only long-delay trials are shown. A small proportion of short-delay trials (20%, with a delay of 1.5 or 3.5 s) were included to create temporal uncertainty and encourage consistent active preparation during the delay. Both component gratings were flickering at 10 Hz between white and black, so that luminance could not confound either the task strategy (e.g., attending to luminance) or neural measures. The inset shows two sets of color-orientation mapping, which were reversed halfway through the experiment to minimize the impact of cue-induced sensory difference on neural activity. A high-contrast impulse was presented during the preparation period in the Ping session. (B) Perception task. Similar to the attention task, the single-orientation grating also flickered at 10 Hz between white and black. (C) Behavioral accuracy in the attention tasks in the No-Ping and Ping sessions. Each dot represents one subject’s data. Error bars denote standard error of the means (SEM).
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Figure 1—source data 1
Behavioral accuracy in the attention tasks.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig1-data1-v1.csv
Figure 2 with 1 supplement
Multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) for the No-Ping session and Ping session.
(A) Schematic illustration of the decoding of attended orientation (attend leftward vs. attend rightward) in the attention task (left panel) and the cross-task generalization analysis from perception task to the attention task (right panel). The four regions are shown on a representative right hemisphere as colored areas: V1 is marked in red, extrastriate visual cortex (EVC) in yellow, intraparietal sulcus (IPS) in cyan, and prefrontal cortex (PFC) in purple. (B) Decoding accuracy during preparation and stimulus selection periods across regions in the No-Ping and (D) Ping session. (C) Cross-task generalization performance from the perception task to the preparatory periods and the stimulus selection periods across regions in the No-Ping and (E) Ping session. The dashed lines represent the theoretical chance level (0.5). Each dot represents one subject’s data. Error bars denote SEM.
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Figure 2—source data 1
Decoding accuracy across brain regions in the attention tasks.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig2-data1-v1.csv
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Figure 2—source data 2
Cross-task decoding generalization across brain regions.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig2-data2-v1.csv
Figure 2—figure supplement 1
Sensory decoding in the perception task.
(A) Decoding of orientations in No-Ping and (B) Ping sessions. The dashed lines represent theoretical chance level (0.5). The decoding accuracy was significantly above-chance across regions in both sessions (ps < 0.004). A two-way mixed ANOVA (sessions × region) revealed a main effect of region (F(3,114) = 84.274, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.689), Neither the main effect of session (F(1,38) = 1.103, p = 0.300, ηp2 = 0.028; BFexcl = 2.605) nor an interaction effect was significant (F(3,114) = 0.592, p = 0.621, ηp2 = 0.015; BFexcl = 5.809). Each dot represents one participant. Error bars denote standard error of the means.
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Figure 2—figure supplement 1—source data 1
Decoding accuracy across brain regions in the perception task.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig2-figsupp1-data1-v1.csv
Figure 3 with 2 supplements
Orientation-selective attentional modulations on neural pattern distances during preparation.
(A) Schematic illustration of the representational distance (mean Mahalanobis distances) between each of the attention conditions and each of the perception conditions. Colored arrows indicate measures of the pair-wise Mahalanobis distance. The right panel shows two attention trials (red indicates attend-to-leftward and green indicates attend-to-rightward) to the distribution of each perception condition (shown in a cloud of light-colored dots). (B) Mahalanobis distance between preparatory attention condition and perceived orientation condition in the No-Ping and (C) Ping sessions. Error bars denote SEM. (D) Correlations between attentional modulation index (AMI) and reaction time (RT) in the No-Ping and (E) Ping sessions. Each dot represents one subject’s data. The shaded area represents the confidence intervals of the regressed lines. **p < 0.01.
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Figure 3—source data 1
Mahalanobis distances between preparatory attention conditions and the perception conditions.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig3-data1-v1.csv
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Figure 3—source data 2
Attentional modulation index and reaction time.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig3-data2-v1.csv
Figure 3—figure supplement 1
Mahalanobis distance during stimulus selection period.
(A) Attentional modulation on Mahalanobis distance in the No-Ping and (B) Ping sessions. Two-way repeated-measures ANOVAs (attended orientation × orientation) were performed on the Mahalanobis distance during stimulus selection period. Significant interaction effects were observed in both the No-Ping session (V1: F(1,19) = 12.470, p = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.396; extrastriate visual cortex [EVC]: F(1,19) = 26.538, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.583; intraparietal sulcus [IPS]: F(1,19) = 4.250, p = 0.053, ηp2 = 0.183; prefrontal cortex [PFC]: F(1,19) = 1.557, p = 0.227, ηp2 = 0.076) and Ping session (V1: F(1,19) = 11.698, p = 0.003, ηp2 = 0.381; EVC: F(1,19) = 12.742, p = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.401; IPS: F(1,19) = 5.227, p = 0.034, ηp2 = 0.216; PFC: F(1,19) = 0.087, p = 0.771, ηp2 = 0.005). These results support the predicted role of attention in selectively enhancing the representation of task-relevant features while filtering out task-irrelevant ones, leading to neural representations that closely resembled the perception of single features. Each dot represents one participant. Error bars denote standard error of the means. †p < 0.06, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
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Figure 3—figure supplement 1—source data 1
Mahalanobis distances between stimulus-based attention conditions and the perception conditions.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig3-figsupp1-data1-v1.csv
Figure 3—figure supplement 2
Relationship between attentional modulation on Mahalanobis distance and RT.
Using the attentional modulation index (AMI) calculated based on trial-wise Mahalanobis distance in V1 preparatory activity, we sorted the AMI values in a descending order and selected the top-ranked 25% of trials (i.e., 36 trials) and bottom-ranked 25% of trials to represent ‘strong modulation’ and ‘weak modulation’ trials, respectively. We then extracted behavioral responses on these selected trials and calculated RT for each trial type in the (A) No-Ping and (B) Ping sessions. The analysis revealed faster responses in the ‘strong modulation’ than ‘weak modulation’ trials in the Ping session (paired t-test: t(19) = –2.746, p = 0.013, Cohen’s d = –0.614, right panel), but not in the No-Ping session (paired t-test: t(19) = –1.487, p = 0.154, Cohen’s d = –0.332, left panel). Each dot represents one subject’s data. Error bars denote SEM. *p < 0.05.
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Figure 3—figure supplement 2—source data 1
Reaction time in strong and weak attentional modulation trials.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig3-figsupp2-data1-v1.csv
Figure 4 with 3 supplements
Information connectivity analysis.
(A) Schematic illustration of the procedure for the information connectivity analysis in the space of two hypothetical voxels. For each region, we calculated the Mahalanobis distance of the attention trial (from one left-out run) from two attention distributions (all trials from remaining runs). Red and green dots indicate activity patterns from two trials (right panel). The brain image shows an example pair of intercortical information connectivity between V1 and prefrontal cortex (PFC). The time series (lower-left panel) consisted of attentional modulation index (AMI) based on the Mahalanobis distance. (B) Between-region information connectivity in the No-Ping and Ping sessions. (C) The differences in connectivity between the Ping and No-Ping sessions. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.
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Figure 4—source data 1
Information connectivity between brain regions during the preparation period.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig4-data1-v1.csv
Figure 4—figure supplement 1
Relationships between information connectivity and reaction time.
(A) Correlations between prefrontal cortex (V1–PFC) connectivity and RTs in the No-Ping and (B) Ping sessions. We observed a trend toward significance in the correlation between V1–PFC connectivity and RTs in the Ping session (r = –0.394, p = 0.086), but not in the No-Ping session (r = –0.046, p = 0.846). Each dot represents one subject’s data. The shaded area represents the confidence intervals of the regressed lines.
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Figure 4—figure supplement 1—source data 1
Information connectivity in prefrontal cortex (V1–PFC) during preparation and reaction time.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig4-figsupp1-data1-v1.csv
Figure 4—figure supplement 2
Functional connectivity analysis based on multivoxel activity patterns during the stimulus selection period.
The panels show between-region connectivity in the No-Ping session and Ping session based on cross-validated Mahalanobis distance (left panel), and the differences in connectivity between the two sessions (right panel). No significant differences in functional connectivity were observed between sessions (ps >0.224).
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Figure 4—figure supplement 2—source data 1
Information connectivity between brain regions during the stimulus selection period.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig4-figsupp2-data1-v1.csv
Figure 4—figure supplement 3
Functional connectivity analysis based on mean BOLD activity during the preparation period.
To examine whether impulse-driven connectivity changes during preparation were influenced by overall changes in BOLD response, we conducted a standard functional connectivity analysis based on mean BOLD response over time. The panels show between-region connectivity in the No-Ping session and Ping session based on raw time series (left panel), and the connectivity differences between sessions (right panel). This analysis also revealed no significant changes in inter-cortical connections between sessions (ps > 0.136).
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Figure 4—figure supplement 3—source data 1
Information connectivity between brain regions during the preparatory period based on BOLD activity.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/103425/elife-103425-fig4-figsupp3-data1-v1.csv
Appendix 1—figure 1
Univariate BOLD results.
(A). Mean fMRI time course from four regions (V1, EVC, IPS, and PFC) for No-Ping session and (B) Ping session. The gray triangle indicates the onset of superimposed gratings. The gray area indicates a slightly elevated response in the presence of visual impulse. Error bars denote standard error of the means.
Appendix 1—figure 2
Analysis of eye positions.
(A) Group-level horizontal eye position and (B) vertical eye position for the preparation period during behavioral training in No-Ping and Ping sessions. Each dot represents one participant. Error bars denote standard error of the means.
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Dual-format attentional template during preparation in human visual cortex
eLife 13:RP103425.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.103425.4
