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The Role of the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Attentional Bias

Knight, Helen C.; Smith, Daniel T.; Ellison, Amanda

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Authors

Helen C. Knight



Abstract

The DLPFC is thought to be critically involved in maintaining attention away from behaviourally irrelevant information, and in the establishment of attentional control settings. These play an important role in the phenomenon of top-down bias to features in the visual field – also known as attentional bias. This paper probes the involvement of the left DLPFC in attentional bias by manipulating its cortical excitability via tDCS and then analysing these effects following an induced attentional bias towards the colour green. Although both anodal and cathodal tDCS over the left DLPFC decrease distractibility caused by biased but irrelevant objects, further interrogation of our data reveals theoretically differential mechanisms for each type of stimulation. Anodal tDCS appears to increase cognitive control over attentional bias-related items that are behaviourally irrelevant, allowing for their efficient disregard. In contrast, cathodal tDCS appears to lessen the overall effect of the induced attentional bias, potentially by reducing the influence of top-down modulated attentional control settings thus preventing the implementation of the control setting favouring green items. These results suggest a potential causal role of the left DLPFC in the cognitive mechanism underlying attentional bias.

Citation

Knight, H. C., Smith, D. T., & Ellison, A. (2020). The Role of the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Attentional Bias. Neuropsychologia, 148, Article 107631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107631

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 11, 2020
Online Publication Date Sep 22, 2020
Publication Date 2020-11
Deposit Date Sep 30, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Neuropsychologia
Print ISSN 0028-3932
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 148
Article Number 107631
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107631

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