Neural correlates of the attentional blink

Abstract

Attending to a visual event can lead to functional blindness for other events in the visual field. This limit in our attentional capacities is exemplified by the attentional blink (AB), which refers to the transient but severe impairment in perceiving the second of two temporally neighboring targets. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we observed predominantly right intraparietal and frontal cortex activations associated with the AB. We further demonstrate that an AB can be elicited by both temporal and spatial distractor interference on an attended target and that both of these interference mechanisms activate the same neural circuit. These results suggest that a (right) parietofrontal network previously implicated in attentional control and enhancement is also a locus of capacity-limited processing of visual information.