Abstract:
Dynamic Attending Theory (DAT) suggests that, due to its exorbitant energy
requirements, attention regularly oscillates such that an individual experiences high and
low energetic states during sustained attending that lead to high and low mental
presences, respectively. Attention research is largely focused on endogenous temporal
orienting, however, so little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying exogenous
orienting as specified by DAT. We used TBS to inhibit the right ventral intraparietal
sulcus and right anterior temporoparietal junction during a dynamic attending task to
directly observe their roles in attentional entrainment. We found a significant effect of
Foreperiod, but likely due to low sample size, we found no significance of IOI, the
interaction between the two, or stimulation site. These findings warrant additional
research, to determine how inhibition compares to a control site and to increase power in
the hopes of replicating the results of Sanabria, Capizzi, and Correa (2011).
