ArticleCurrent biology : CB2018
Prefrontal Control of Visual Distraction.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 61 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
61 citing papers in PubMed, 128 citations in OpenAlex.
- L-DOPA administration shifts the stability-flexibility balance towards attentional capture by distractors during a visual search task.Psychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- The role of singleton salience in second-order suppression.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- Turning a blind eye: The struggle to inhibit attention towards unexpected negative emotions.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Unsupervised visual learning is revealed for task-irrelevant natural scenes due to reduced attentional suppression effects in visual areas.Nature communications · 2026Article
- 35+ years of the additional singleton task: Design features and guidelines.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Review
- Not simply two sides of the same coin: Target enhancement and distractor suppression draw on independent neural mechanisms.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- Signal suppression makes search less effortful.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Rapid Inversion of Singleton Distractor Representations Underlies Learned Attentional Suppression.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Predictive Distractor Processing Relies on Integrated Proactive and Reactive Attentional Mechanisms.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Rapid inversion of singleton distractor representations underlies learned attentional suppression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The dual impact of irrelevant visual onsets: Habituation of capture unlocks onset facilitation.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025Article
- Working Memory Updating in the Macaque Lateral Prefrontal Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Salient objects in a scene benefit from enhanced perceptual processing and memory encoding: Evidence for a spatial von Restorff effect.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Anticipatory and reactive mechanisms of habituation to visual distractors.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Unpredictable singleton distractors in visual search can be subject to second-order suppression.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2025Article
- Attentional capture by abrupt onsets: Foundations and emerging issues.Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · 2025Review
- Conflicting Sensory Information Sharpens the Neural Representations of Early Selective Visuospatial Attention.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Terms of debate: Consensus definitions to guide the scientific discourse on visual distraction.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2024Review
- Aging impairs reactive attentional control but not proactive distractor inhibition.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2024Article
- Neural evidence for attentional capture by salient distractors.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
1 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Avoiding distraction by conspicuous but irrelevant stimuli is critical to accomplishing daily tasks. Regions of prefrontal cortex control attention by enhancing the representation of task-relevant information in sensory cortex, which can be measured in modulation of both single neurons and event-related electrical potentials (ERPs) on the cranial surface [1, 2]. When irrelevant information is particularly conspicuous, it can distract attention and interfere with the selection of behaviorally relevant information. Such distraction can be minimized via top-down control [3-5], but the cognitive and neural mechanisms giving rise to this control over distraction remain uncertain and debated [6-9]. Bridging neurophysiology to electrophysiology, we simultaneously recorded neurons in prefrontal cortex and ERPs over extrastriate visual cortex to track the processing of salient distractors during a visual search task. Critically, when the salient distractor was successfully ignored, but not otherwise, we observed robust suppression of salient distractor representations. Like target selection, the distractor suppression was observed in prefrontal cortex before it appeared over extrastriate cortical areas. Furthermore, all prefrontal neurons that showed suppression of the task-irrelevant distractor also contributed to selecting the target. This suggests a common prefrontal mechanism is responsible for both selecting task-relevant and suppressing task-irrelevant information in sensory cortex. Taken together, our results resolve a long-standing debate over the mechanisms that prevent distraction, and provide the first evidence directly linking suppressed neural firing in prefrontal cortex with surface ERP measures of distractor suppression.
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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.