RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Periodic neglect after frontoparietal lesions provides causal evidence for rhythmic attention sampling
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.11.07.515418
DO 10.1101/2022.11.07.515418
A1 Isabel Raposo
A1 Sara M. Szczepanski
A1 Kathleen Haaland
A1 Tor Endestad
A1 Anne-Kristin Solbakk
A1 Robert T. Knight
A1 Randolph F. Helfrich
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/11/07/2022.11.07.515418.abstract
AB Contemporary models conceptualize spatial attention as a blinking spotlight that sequentially samples visual space. Hence, behavior fluctuates over time even in states of presumed ‘sustained’ attention. Recent evidence suggested that rhythmic neural activity in the frontoparietal network constitutes the functional basis of rhythmic attentional sampling. However, causal evidence to support this notion remains absent. Using a lateralized spatial attention task, we addressed this issue in patients with focal lesions in the frontoparietal attention network. Our results uncovered that frontoparietal lesions introduce periodic neglect, i.e., temporally-specific behavioral deficits that were aligned with the underlying neural oscillations. Attention-guided perceptual sensitivity was on par with healthy controls during optimal phases but attenuated during the less excitable sub-cycles. Theta-dependent sampling (3 – 8 Hz) was causally dependent on prefrontal cortex, while alpha-band sampling (8 – 14 Hz) emerged from parietal areas. Collectively, our findings reveal that lesion-induced high amplitude, low frequency brain activity is not epiphenomenal, but has immediate behavioral consequences. More generally, these results provide causal evidence for the hypothesis that the functional architecture of attention is inherently rhythmic.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.