Citation

Ririe DG, Danilo Boada M, Schmidt BS, Martin SJ, Kim SA, Martin TJ. J. Exp. Neurosci. 2017; 11: 1179069517703080.

Affiliation

Department of Anesthesiology, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1179069517703080

PMID

28469479

PMCID

PMC5398228

Abstract

Involvement of attentional processes is generally evidenced by disruption of behavior in the presence of distracting stimuli. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) seems to play a role in fine-tuning activity during attentional tasks. A novel titration variant of the 5-choice serial reaction time task (5-choice serial reaction time titration variant [5CTV]) that adjusts task difficulty based on subject performance was used to evaluate the effects of audiovisual distraction (DSTR) on performance and mPFC single spike activity and local field potential (LFP). Attention was impaired in the 5CTV from DSTR, and mPFC spike activity was increased, whereas LFP was reduced. The increased spike activity in the mPFC in conjunction with DSTR suggests that conflicting attentional demands may contribute to the reduced task performance. As both hypo- and hyperactivation of the mPFC may contribute to attentional disruption, further studies using the 5CTV are needed to understand mPFC activity changes in real time during disruption of performance by other types of behavioral or neurobiological manipulations.

Language: en

Keywords

5 choice; Attention; action potentials; brain; cortex; distraction; electrophysiology; local field potential; neuron spike; prefrontal; whole animal