Augmenting distractor filtering via transcranial magnetic stimulation of the lateral occipital cortex.

Visual selective attention (VSA) optimizes perception and behavioral control by enabling efficient selection of relevant information and filtering of distractors. While focusing resources on task-relevant information helps counteract distraction, dedicated filtering mechanisms have recently been demonstrated, allowing neural systems to implement suitable policies for the suppression of potential interference. Limited evidence is presently available concerning the neural underpinnings of these mechanisms, and whether neural circuitry within the visual cortex might play a causal role in their instantiation, a possibility that we directly tested here.

Reward-based plasticity of spatial priority maps: Exploiting inter-subject variability to probe the underlying neurobiology.

Recent evidence indicates that the attentional priority of objects and locations is altered by the controlled delivery of reward, reflecting reward-based attentional learning. Here, we take an approach hinging on intersubject variability to probe the neurobiological bases of the reward-driven plasticity of spatial priority maps. Specifically, we ask whether an individual's susceptibility to the reward-based treatment can be accounted for by specific predictors, notably personality traits that are linked to reward processing (along with more general personality traits), but also gender.

Neural structures involved in visual search guidance by reward-enhanced contextual cueing of the target location.

Spatial contextual cueing reflects an incidental form of learning that occurs when spatial distractor configurations are repeated in visual search displays. Recently, it was reported that the efficiency of contextual cueing can be modulated by reward. We replicated this behavioral finding and investigated its neural basis with fMRI.

The cerebellum and visual perceptual learning: evidence from a motion extrapolation task.

Visual perceptual learning is widely assumed to reflect plastic changes occurring along the cerebro-cortical visual pathways, including at the earliest stages of processing, though increasing evidence indicates that higher-level brain areas are also involved. Here we addressed the possibility that the cerebellum plays an important role in visual perceptual learning. Within the realm of motor control, the cerebellum supports learning of new skills and recalibration of motor commands when movement execution is consistently perturbed (adaptation).

Altering spatial priority maps via reward-based learning.

Spatial priority maps are real-time representations of the behavioral salience of locations in the visual field, resulting from the combined influence of stimulus driven activity and top-down signals related to the current goals of the individual. They arbitrate which of a number of (potential) targets in the visual scene will win the competition for attentional resources. As a result, deployment of visual attention to a specific spatial location is determined by the current peak of activation (corresponding to the highest behavioral salience) across the map.