ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2017
Cholinergic, But Not Dopaminergic or Noradrenergic, Enhancement Sharpens Visual Spatial Perception in Humans.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 71 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cholinergic system in schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Effect of muscarinic blockade on the speed of attention shifting, read-out delays and learning.Psychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Enhanced visual contrast suppression during peak psilocybin effects: Psychophysical results from a pilot randomized controlled trial.Journal of vision · 2024Trial
- Boosting Learning Efficacy with Noninvasive Brain Stimulation in Intact and Brain-Damaged Humans.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2019Trial
- Clinical Validation of Pupil Response During Walking in Parkinson's Disease.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The central cholinergic system as a therapeutic target in Parkinson's disease.Journal of Parkinson's disease · 2026Review
- Disruption of low-frequency narrowband EEG microstate networks in Parkinson's disease with mild cognitive impairment.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- Adaptive arousal regulation: Pharmacologically shifting the peak of the Yerkes-Dodson curve by catecholaminergic enhancement of arousal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Cognitive impairment and vulnerability of cholinergic brain network in the Alzheimer's continuum: free-water imaging based on diffusion tensor imaging.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Pharmacological Elevation of Catecholamine Levels Improves Perceptual Decisions, But Not Metacognitive Insight.eNeuro · 2024Article
- Catecholaminergic neuromodulation and selective attention jointly shape perceptual decision-making.eLife · 2023Article
- Cholinergic modulation of sensory perception and plasticity.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Improving Visual Working Memory with Cholinergic Deep Brain Stimulation.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Effects of involuntary and voluntary attention on critical spacing of visual crowding.Journal of vision · 2023Article
- Dose-Dependent Dissociation of Pro-cognitive Effects of Donepezil on Attention and Cognitive Flexibility in Rhesus Monkeys.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Article
- Transcranial random noise stimulation and exercise do not modulate ocular dominance plasticity in adults with normal vision.Journal of vision · 2022Article
- Cholinergic system changes in Parkinson's disease: emerging therapeutic approaches.The Lancet. Neurology · 2022Review
- Rapid Effects of Vagus Nerve Stimulation on Sensory Processing Through Activation of Neuromodulatory Systems.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
- Neuromodulation of prefrontal cortex cognitive function in primates: the powerful roles of monoamines and acetylcholine.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Review
- Neurochemistry of Visual Attention.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The neuromodulator acetylcholine modulates spatial integration in visual cortex by altering the balance of inputs that generate neuronal receptive fields. These cholinergic effects may provide a neurobiological mechanism underlying the modulation of visual representations by visual spatial attention. However, the consequences of cholinergic enhancement on visuospatial perception in humans are unknown. We conducted two experiments to test whether enhancing cholinergic signaling selectively alters perceptual measures of visuospatial interactions in human subjects. In Experiment 1, a double-blind placebo-controlled pharmacology study, we measured how flanking distractors influenced detection of a small contrast decrement of a peripheral target, as a function of target-flanker distance. We found that cholinergic enhancement with the cholinesterase inhibitor donepezil improved target detection, and modeling suggested that this was mainly due to a narrowing of the extent of facilitatory perceptual spatial interactions. In Experiment 2, we tested whether these effects were selective to the cholinergic system or would also be observed following enhancements of related neuromodulators dopamine or norepinephrine. Unlike cholinergic enhancement, dopamine (bromocriptine) and norepinephrine (guanfacine) manipulations did not improve performance or systematically alter the spatial profile of perceptual interactions between targets and distractors. These findings reveal mechanisms by which cholinergic signaling influences visual spatial interactions in perception and improves processing of a visual target among distractors, effects that are notably similar to those of spatial selective attention.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.