The effects of ignored versus foveated cues upon inhibition of return: An event-related potential study

Abstract

Taylor and Klein (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 26:1639-1656, 2000) discovered two mutually exclusive "flavors" of inhibition of return (IOR): When the oculomotor system is "actively suppressed," IOR affects input processes (the perception/attention flavor), whereas when the oculomotor system is "engaged," IOR affects output processes (the motor flavor). Studies of brain activity with ignored cues have typically reported that IOR reduces an early sensory event-related potential (ERP) component (i.e., the P1 component) of the brain's response to the target. Since eye movements were discouraged in these experiments, the P1 reduction might be a reflection of the perception/attention flavor of IOR. If, instead of ignoring the cue, participants made a prosaccade to the cue (and then returned to fixation) before responding to the target, the motor flavor of IOR should then be generated. We compared these two conditions while monitoring eye position and recording ERPs to the targets. If the P1 modulation is related to the perceptual/ attentional flavor of IOR, we hypothesized that it might be absent when the motoric flavor of IOR was generated by a prosaccade to the cue. Our results demonstrated that targetrelated P1 reductions and behavioral IOR were similar, and significant, in both conditions. However, P1 modulations were significantly correlated with behavioral IOR only when the oculomotor system was actively suppressed, suggesting that P1 modulations may only affect behaviorally exhibited IOR when the attentional/perceptual flavor of IOR is recruited.

Memory instruction interacts with both visual and motoric inhibition of return

“…Finally, in investigations of IOR using event-related potential (ERP) technology, reductions in P1 (an early sensory component) occur under conditions that elicit the motoric as well as those that elicit the visual form of IOR. However, these P1 modulations correlate with behavior only when the oculomotor system is suppressed (Satel, Hilchey, Wang, Story, & Klein, 2013). The distinction between these two forms of IOR is also supported by neurophysiological evidence that they are differentially affected by brain damage and rTMS manipulations, in which double dissociations have been observed (Bourgeois, Chica, Migliaccio, Thiebault de Schotten, & Bartolomeo, 2012;Bourgeois, Chica, Valero-Cabré, & Bartolomeo, 2013).…”

In search of a reliable electrophysiological marker of oculomotor inhibition of return

“…A wide range of approaches and tools [spanning behavior (Posner & Cohen, ), development (Clohessy, Posner, Rothbart, & Vecera, ), lesion patients (Sapir et al., ), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; Mayer, Dorflinger, Rao, & Seidenberg, ), extracellular recording (Dorris, Klein, Everling, & Munoz, ), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS; van Koningsbruggen, Gabay, Sapir, Henik, & Rafal, ), and electroencephalography (EEG; McDonald, Ward, & Kiehl, )] have been used to further evaluate the neural mechanisms underlying IOR when responses to visual signals are discouraged (for a review, see Klein, ). Among the neuroimaging techniques that have been applied to IOR, EEG methods and the event‐related potentials (ERPs) they measure have featured prominently in many investigations involving human subjects (for reviews, see Prime & Ward, ; Satel, Hilchey, Wang, Story, & Klein, ). Using ERPs to investigate attentional phenomena, a number of studies have revealed that several relatively early ERP components can be modulated by attention.…”

“…Satel et al. () demonstrated that, although such target‐elicited P1 reductions were correlated with the magnitude of the IOR effect when the oculomotor system was forbidden from responding to peripheral onset events, there was no such correlation when saccades were made to the cues. As such, and in line with our motivation for conducting the present investigation (discussed in the next section), it remains possible—if not likely—that the neural substrates underlying IOR are different when oculomotor responding is imperative and not actively discouraged.…”

Inhibition of Return Is Modulated by Negative Stimuli: Evidence from Subliminal Perception

“…Another alternative explanation was that the early posterior Nd might reflect sensory refractoriness, which could be very common in spatial cueing studies (McDonald et al, 1999). Recently, Nd is considered as a potential neutral marker for IOR, which refers to a reduction of cued location as compared to uncued location (Satel et al, 2013, 2014). However, there was no agreed explanation of the underlying mechanism of Nd.…”