10-Hz Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation over the Frontal Eye Field Modulates Feature-Based Attention

Abstract

The frontal eye field (FEF) is an important brain area related to visual feature-based attention (FBA). In this study, we applied 10-Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the right FEF (rFEF), designed an improved version of attention network test (ANT) with two attributes (direction and color), to explore the relationship between rFEF and the attentional network (including alerting, orienting and executive control network) and between rFEF and visual FBA. 24 healthy subjects completed the improved ANT after stimulation. The sham stimulation experiment was set as the control group. The experimental results show that the stimuli applied to rFEF can not significantly affect the attention subnetwork. However, rFEF, as a part of the frontoparietal network, affects the relevant connections of the frontoparietal network after a short local stimulation, thereby significantly reducing the reaction time of the subjects. In addition, rFEF is closely related to attribute selection in visual FBA tasks, which has been confirmed.