Selective inhibition of distracting input.

We review a series of studies exploring distractor suppression. It is often assumed that preparatory distractor suppression is controlled via top-down mechanisms of attention akin to those that prepare brain areas for target enhancement. Here, we consider two alternative mechanisms: secondary inhibition and expectation suppression within a predictive coding framework. We draw on behavioural studies, evidence from neuroimaging and some animal studies. We conclude that there is very limited evidence for selective top-down control of preparatory inhibition. By contrast, we argue that distractor suppression often relies secondary inhibition of non-target items (relatively non-selective inhibition) and on statistical regularities of the environment, learned through direct experience.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Behavioural Brain Research

• Publication date

  2017-10-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.bbr.2017.10.010PMID 29042157
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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