Cognitive neuroscience of atypical attention in autism and ADHD

The perceptual saliency of distracting non-target information presents a major challenge for attention selection processes, which are required to bias selection away from distracting, non-target items. Consequently, when atypicality in these processes is present it can have an overarching effect on human behaviour. While attention atypicality is presumably obvious in ADHD, it is also manifest in other conditions such as autism (which has very high co-occurrence with ADHD) as well as in Psychosis (and the broader spectrum of their traits in neurotypical participants; e.g., Abu-akel et al., 2018).

The attention tendencies in these conditions not only fit with the pattern of behaviour in attention tasks per se. but may also be associated with more complex behaviours associated with these conditions. It is therefore critical to understand the possible modulation of the attention system and to identify the brain mechanisms that are underlying attention performance in these conditions. Previous work (including in our lab; e.g., Bravo Balsa et al., 2024; Kolodny et al., 2020) have pointed to suspected nodes of the DMN and Dorsal and Ventral attention networks (Precuneus, IPS and TPJ, respectively) as foci of modulation of the attention control system in autism and ADHD.

The proposed project will apply converging operations with a focus on brain stimulation (TMS) and fMRI to provide a functional brain mechanistic framework for understanding attention atypicality in autism and ADHD. This work may also pave the way for future intervention targets in the conditions from both a behaviour and neuroscience perspectives.

The project will be conducted within the Centre for Human Brain Health (https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/centre-for-human-brain-health), which is a state-of-the-art neuroimaging centre with dedicated facilities for studying the human brain.