Pre-stimulus Cortical State Modulates Dimension-Specific Attentional Capture
Chen, S.; Allenmark, F.; Yu, H.; Mueller, H. J.; Shi, Z.
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Salient distractors capture attention, but whether momentary cortical state modulates capture -- and whether this depends on attentional filtering routines -- remains unclear. Using fMRI during visual search in human participants (N = 34), we examined how pre-stimulus global signal (GS) interacts with dimension-specific capture and location-based suppression learning. Same-dimension distractors activated frontoparietal regions (FEF, IPS/SPL, SMA) and produced robust capture, whereas different-dimension distractors produced little behavioral or neural capture, consistent with dimension-selective gating. Pre-stimulus GS negatively modulated capture-related brain activation. Behaviorally, however, GS effects diverged by learning history: GS predicted slower responses in participants who learned location-based suppression for same-dimension distractors (SS group), but faster responses in participants whose spatial learning involved different-dimension distractors (DS group). Thus, the state indexed by GS did not have uniform behavioral consequences. Instead, the findings suggest that the impact of cortical state depends on the control demands and the filtering routine engaged, consistent with broader views that arousal-related effects on performance vary with processing mode and task utility.
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