ORCID Profile
0000-0003-1814-9527
Current Organisations
Massey University
,
Victoria University of Wellington
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.CORTEX.2017.10.003
Abstract: Selective attention is the process of directing limited capacity resources to behaviourally relevant stimuli while ignoring competing stimuli that are currently irrelevant. Studies in healthy human participants and in in iduals with focal brain lesions have suggested that the right parietal cortex is crucial for resolving competition for attention. Following right-hemisphere damage, for ex le, patients may have difficulty reporting a brief, left-sided stimulus if it occurs with a competitor on the right, even though the same left stimulus is reported normally when it occurs alone. Such "extinction" of contralesional stimuli has been documented for all the major sense modalities, but it remains unclear whether its occurrence reflects involvement of one or more specific subregions of the temporo-parietal cortex. Here we employed repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the right hemisphere to examine the effect of disruption of two candidate regions - the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and the superior temporal gyrus (STG) - on auditory selective attention. Eighteen neurologically normal, right-handed participants performed an auditory task, in which they had to detect target digits presented within simultaneous dichotic streams of spoken distractor letters in the left and right channels, both before and after 20 min of 1 Hz rTMS over the SMG, STG or a somatosensory control site (S1). Across blocks, participants were asked to report on auditory streams in the left, right, or both channels, which yielded focused and ided attention conditions. Performance was unchanged for the two focused attention conditions, regardless of stimulation site, but was selectively impaired for contralateral left-sided targets in the ided attention condition following stimulation of the right SMG, but not the STG or S1. Our findings suggest a causal role for the right inferior parietal cortex in auditory selective attention.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: Australia
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Start Date: 2018
End Date: 2019
Funder: Wellcome Trust
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2019
End Date: 2021
Funder: Neurological Foundation of New Zealand
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2019
End Date: 2021
Funder: Neurological Foundation of New Zealand
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2020
End Date: 2007
Funder: Royal Society of New Zealand
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2007
End Date: 2007
Funder: Victoria University of Wellington
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2010
End Date: 2014
Funder: Cambridge Commonwealth Trust
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2016
End Date: 2016
Funder: Newton Fund
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2014
End Date: 2017
Funder: Marie Curie
View Funded Activity