Abstract
During a visual search task, attentional capture is the inability to inhibit the allocation of attention towards highly salient distractors. In studies using the N2pc as marker of attentional selection, only few experiments have demonstrated pure buttom-up attentional capture by salient distractors. In contrast, a larger number of experiments reported modulations of attentional capture by top-down processes. However, an important aspect of human cognition, the interindividual differences between participants, is often overlooked. The GABA level in the frontal eyed fields and the density of parietel cortex have been shown to correlate with the magnitude of attentional distraction. Because the parietal cortex is the likely neural source of the N2pc, we explored the correlation between the amplitude of the N2pc in the additional singleton paradigm and individual scores at the Cognitive Failure Questionnaire (CFQ) which has been reported to positively correlate with the density of the left superior parietal lobe. We obtained a significant correlation between the N2pc capture effect and CFQ scores. Surprisingly, participants with high distractibility had a more positive N2pc to the distractor in the attentional capture condition. During the N2pc time window, the source estimation underscores a significant difference of source current density in superior parietal lobes compared to passive viewing of the same stimuli. We will discuss the hypothesis proposed by past authors (the maturation hypothesis and compensation hypothesis) in light of the attentional mecanisms related to N2pc. Further, we investigated the specific microstate topography associated with the attentional network.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012