Attentional Control

Developing a Multi-scale Account of Attentional Control as the Constraining Interface Between Vision and Action (MAC-Brain).

The project is dedicated to understanding the integration within the brain of signals of different natures that contribute to attentional control. The investigator will make use of standardized experimental displays involving the discrimination of a target (tilted-bar) presented together with 3 distractor items, with one stimulus in each visual quadrant. Across three fMRI experiments in healthy participants, the investigator will manipulate different types of signals that will guide the subject's attention towards one of the four quadrants: Exp 1 - task instruction & item salience; Exp 2 - probabilistic target location; Exp 3 - probabilistic reward. The investigator expects that irrespective of the nature of the control signal, activity in dorsal parietal cortex will index the currently relevant/attended location. Moreover, The investigator expects that upon changes of the most relevant location, one will observe activation of the ventral parietal cortex, plus increased inter-regional connectivity between ventral and dorsal parietal regions - again irrespective of the nature of the attention guiding signals.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Be 18 to 40 years old

Exclusion Criteria:

• Previous neurologic or psychiatric disease.
• Cognitive deficits restricting understanding of the tasks.
• Pregnant or breath-feeding women.
• Persons under guardianship, curator or any other administrative or judicial measure of deprivation of rights or liberty.
• Subjects currently participating in other study.

Additional exclusion criteria for a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recording:

• Neurologic, cardiac electrostimulation or defibrillator.
• Cardiac prostheses
• Intracranial clips or clamps
• Cerebrospinal fluid disorders
• Metal particles in the eyes
• Metal dental or articular prostheses
• Diffusion pomp or other infusion system
• Claustrophobia
• Head tattoo, make-up, hair gel
• Have any copper intrauterine device