Assessing Connectivity Between Brain Regions During Object Category-Tuned Attention and Spatial Distraction

To prioritize goal-relevant visual information, our brain is able to filter out less relevant visual input. Specific object categories, such as faces and scenes, are processed by specific regions in the brain. These brain areas can act as attentional filters biased toward processing object category information relevant to our goals. In our everyday life, there are distractions that can capture our spatial attention. What happens to these category-tuned attentional filters when we get distracted? A recent fMRI study by (Dube et al., 2022), investigated the effects that visual distraction has on category-tuned filters in the ventral visual cortex (Fusiform Face Area [FFA] and Parahippocampal Place Area [PPA]) and discovered a novel consequence of distraction on these filters which regulate category-specific object processing. Participants in this study viewed hybrid face/house images and were told to attend to either faces or houses. The presence of a salient distractor disrupts these filters, such that our brain incidentally processes the goal-irrelevant category more than during distractor-absent trials. However, it is still unclear which brain areas may be modulating this filter disruption. To learn more about the neural pathways implicated in this filter disruption, here we expand on the previous study by conducting functional connectivity analyses among particular brain regions during distractor-present versus distractor-absent trials. We compared connectivity between the category-tuned areas (FFA or PPA) and the early visual cortex (EVC) showing that in the absence of a distractor, task-relevant category-tuned areas have significantly higher connectivity with the EVC during their attend-preferred conditions (e.g. FFA-EVC during attend-face). In the presence of a distractor, we observe some differences in connectivity patterns between the category-tuned areas, EVC, and fronto-parietal attentional control regions. These results suggest that connectivity patterns with the early visual cortex may inform us about the mechanism underlying category-selective attentional filter disruption.