Behavior on distractor-salient trials directly measured the outcome of competition between top-down knowledge and bottom-up attentional capture; the behavioral data demonstrated trial-by-trial differences in whether oculomotor control of the first saccade was won by top-down (i.e., fs-target trials) or bottom-up (i.e., fs-distractor trials) attentional processes.
This saccade-locked alpha was specific to distractor-salient trials and could index the transient inhibition of the prepotent response to saccade to the more salient distractor; when inhibition was successful, top-down processes won the competition for selection and the first saccade was directed to the target.
Finally, the benefits from the appropriate TMS frequency for a given target level were particularly pronounced for distractor salient incongruent trials (leading to an interaction of task, TMS frequency, congruency, and saliency: F 1,11) = 7.84, p = 0.017).
These distractor salient incongruent trials are those that led to the most interference in the absence of TMS (as in [ 12]), as we replicated here for the sham conditions (see Figure S1A).
Analyses of neutral (i.e., non-salient distractor) trials were also included to control for any effects related to making a first saccade to the target or distractor, irrespective of distractor salience (i,e., the random selection of either stimulus).
Mice trained to discriminate urines from panels of mice that differed both in diet and MHC type found the diet odor more salient in generalization trials.
On some trials, a salient distractor was presented that either selectively activated the parvocellular system (parvo-biased distractors) or activated both the magnocellular and parvocellular systems (magno+parvo distractors).
Statistical analysis of this deflection (mean amplitude from −0.05 to 0.05 S) also revealed a significant interaction of the first saccade and salience: (F 1,10) = 7.82, p = .019 ):The fs-distractor trials during salient distractors had a negative inflection locked to the onset of the saccade (−1.04 µV ), but the ERP deflection was positive for all the other saccades ( mean 0.35 µV ).
The last three points will be particularly salient during the Roeder trial.
The salient aspects of the trial need to be understood and reflected upon.
Given that novel singletons [32] and new objects [33] will disrupt search to the greatest degree, we maximized our ability to detect the impact of the salient distractor by only analyzing trials in which the salient distractor was absent in the preceding trial.
