Schedule of Events | Symposia

Choose Your Own Attention: Does PFC Resting State Determine Selective Attention Ability?

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Madison Gaugler¹, A'maya Tatum, Chase Elliott, Kayla Challacombe, Carole Scherling; ¹Belmont University

A resting brain exhibits patterns that closely resemble task-related attention networks (Park & Madden, 2013). Particularly, executive functions recruit the prefrontal cortex (PFC; Rossi, 2008; Racz, 2017) and higher rest activity associates with higher executive task performance (Jia, 2016). Hence, investigating PFC resting-state can elucidate active state and task performance outcomes. Selective attention, an executive domain, has been mostly investigated using EEG and fMRI. The current fNIRS study probed PFC resting-state as a predictor of selective attention performance. Forty-six undergraduates [29F, age (SD)= 20 (1.39)] completed eyes-open/-closed resting sessions (8-minutes each; 8x8 PFC montage). Participants engaged with an Attentional Bias Cueing Task, with accuracy and reaction times as performance outcomes (accuracy rates (%)= 93.2 (3.1); average latency (msec)= 451 (87.51)). We hypothesized that higher eyes-open and -closed PFC rest activity would associate with a) higher task accuracy and b) faster reaction times. Results did not reveal significant correlations between PFC resting-states and selective attention performance (p> 0.05), potentially indicating that resting-state PFC is not modulatory for selective-attention performance. With few imaging studies systematically investigating resting-state and this attentional domain, we are limited to discuss alignment with field findings. We suggest the application of a more complex selective-attention task to increase performance variability, as well as to shift attention away from global PFC activity and more on localized ventromedial and dorsolateral PFC involvement. Overall, the current findings support the use of fNIRS to probe resting-state activity and brain lateralization, and additionally promote its flexible applications for executive functioning studies,

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Other