We all experience distraction, but the ability to limit it appropriately is essential for the successful accomplishment of daily tasks, academic goals, and professional advancement. This is particularly true in the digital age we live in where we are constantly bombarded with sensory stimuli and information content. However, despite its fundamental importance for human behavior, we know relatively little about the underlying brain and cognitive mechanisms of distractor suppression. In the proposed work, we will investigate the core brain networks and mental representations that control distractor suppression and furthermore examine why some individuals are more efficient at it than others. The proposed work will help develop evidence-based approaches for dealing with distractor suppression in a variety of situations including psychiatric disorders (e.g., ADHD, schizophrenia), declines during healthy aging, or when sustained attentiveness is important but difficult to maintain (e.g., driving).
The proposed work is designed to identify how healthy humans suppress distractions using a number of behavior and brain-based methods including eye-tracking, fMRI, and EEG. The specific aims of the project are: (1) to examine how the mental template (of task-relevant information) that is held in working memory determines the speed of distractor rejection, and to understand how individual differences in the quality of the mental template affects the ability to reject distractors; (2) to identify the neural representation of the mental template and use it to predict the speed of distractor rejection (i.e., the time necessary to suppress processing of distractors that have captured attention); and (3) to understand how the mental template sets attentional priority and the temporal dynamics between distractor suppression and target selection. Distraction may be inevitable in our dynamic and often unpredictable world and therefore our ability to suppress it efficiently confers tangible advantages for our ability to pursue and complete our goals. This proposal tackles the problem of understanding the mechanisms of distractor suppression by identifying the behavioral metrics that define its speed and the brain representations that underlie it. The proposed work will advance knowledge by filling the gap in understanding of how we reject distractors and why we differ from one another in the ability to do so.
