Top-down control of the left visual field bias in cued visual spatial attention

Abstract

A left visual field (LVF) bias in perceptual judgments, response speed, and discrimination accuracy has been reported in humans. Cognitive factors, such as visual spatial attention, are known to modulate or even eliminate this bias. We investigated this problem by recording pupillometry together with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a cued visual spatial attention task. We observed that (i) the pupil was significantly more dilated following attend-right than attend-left cues, (ii) the task performance (e.g. reaction time [RT]) did not differ between attend-left and attend-right trials, and (iii) the difference in cue-related pupil dilation between attend-left and attend-right trials was inversely related to the corresponding difference in RT. Neuroscientically, correlating the difference in cue-related pupil dilation with the corresponding cue-related fMRI difference yielded activations primarily in the right hemisphere, including the right intraparietal sulcus and the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. These results suggest that (i) there is an asymmetry in visual spatial attention control, with the rightward attention control being more effortful than the leftward attention control, (ii) this asymmetry underlies the reduction or the elimination of the LVF bias, and (iii) the components of the attentional control networks in the right hemisphere are likely part of the neural substrate of the observed asymmetry in attentional control.

Distinct patterns of spatial attentional modulation of steady‐state visual evoked magnetic fields (SSVEFs) in subdivisions of the human early visual cortex

“…However, it is a very common finding in spatial attention studies that the left visual hemifield that projects into the right cortical hemisphere is superior in stimulus processing and results in higher cortical activation patterns compared to the right visual hemifield (cf. Asanowicz et al, 2013; Corbetta & Shulman, 2011; Meyyappan et al, 2023). This so‐called left visual hemifield advantage might have resulted in the activation strength differences between the left and right cortical hemispheres in the present study.…”

Neural Correlates of High-Level Visual Saliency Models

“…We were able to confirm this finding on two datasets (see Figure 8), where the first fixation preferentially targeted the left and upper visual field while all remaining fixations were more evenly distributed. However, spatial cueing may reduce or even eliminate the attentional bias towards the left side [93].…”

Modulation of reaching by spatial attention

“…Healthy participants tend to place a bisection marker to the left of the real midpoint on a horizontal line, a bias called ‘the left visual field bias’ or ‘pseudoneglect’ ( Bowers and Heilman, 1980 ). This bias may be explained by the right hemisphere’s dominance in directing spatial attention ( Heilman and Van Den Abell, 1980 ; Reuter-Lorenz et al, 1990 ; Benwell et al, 2014 ), accompanied by the lesser effort required when attending to the left visual field compared to the right ( Meyyappan et al, 2023 ). The dominance of the right hemisphere is also supported by a PET study showing that there are two distinct representations in the right hemisphere for directing attention toward the left or right visual field, but only one representation in the left hemisphere for directing attention mainly into the right visual field.…”