Concurrent neuroimaging and neurostimulation reveals a causal role for dlPFC in coding of task-relevant information.

ABSTRACT: Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is proposed to drive brain-wide focus by biasing processing in favour of task-relevant information. A longstanding debate concerns whether this is achieved through enhancing processing of relevant information and/or by inhibiting irrelevant information. To address this, we applied transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during fMRI, and tested for causal changes in information coding. Participants attended to one feature, whilst ignoring another feature, of a visual object. If dlPFC is necessary for facilitation, disruptive TMS should decrease coding of attended features. Conversely, if dlPFC is crucial for inhibition, TMS should increase coding of ignored features. Here, we show that TMS decreases coding of relevant information across frontoparietal

SUBMITTER: Jackson JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8128861 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature