Continuous theta burst TMS of area MT+ impairs attentive motion tracking

Abstract

Attentive motion tracking deficits measured using multiple object tracking (MOT) tasks have been identified in a number of neurodevelopmental disorders such as amblyopia and autism. These deficits are often attributed to the abnormal development of high-level attentional networks. However, neuroimaging evidence from amblyopia suggests that reduced MOT performance can be explained by impaired function in motion-sensitive area MT+ alone. To test the hypothesis that a subtle disruption of MT+ function could cause MOT impairment, we assessed whether continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) of MT+ influenced MOT task accuracy in individuals with normal vision. The MOT stimulus consisted of four target and four distractor dots and was presented at AE10 eccentricity (right/left hemifield). fMRI-guided cTBS was applied to left MT+. Participants (n = 13, age: 27 AE 3) attended separate active and sham cTBS sessions where the MOT task was completed before, 5-min post-and 30-min post-cTBS. Active cTBS significantly impaired MOT task accuracy relative to baseline for the right (stimulated) hemifield 5-min (10 AE 2% reduction) and 30-min (14 AE 3% reduction) post-stimulation. No impairment occurred within the left (control) hemifield after active cTBS or for either hemifield after sham cTBS. These results highlight the importance of lower level motion processing for MOT, suggesting that a minor disruption of MT+ function alone is sufficient to cause a deficit in MOT performance.

Categorical encoding of moving colors during location tracking

“…For the RSA analyses, both the categorical relationship and the hue distance influence the activation patterns in the MT + regions. MT + is a motionselective area whose involvement has been repeatedly reported in MOT studies (Chakraborty et al, 2021;Culham et al, 1998Culham et al, , 2001Howe et al, 2009;Merkel et al, 2015;Nummenmaa et al, 2017). MT + is associated with many different types of motion percepts.…”

“…It appears that our MT + largely overlaps with the previously reported MT + . The MT + is a motion-sensitive area whose involvement has been reported in previous MOT studies (Chakraborty et al, 2021;Culham et al, 1998;Howe et al, 2009;Merkel et al, 2015;Nummenmaa et al, 2017). Accordingly, we defined two separate functional ROIs (left MT + and right MT + ) as two spheres with a radius of 6 mm centered at the peak voxels in the significant clusters.…”