Research
Frequency-tagged fMRI reveals dual mechanisms of attentional enhancement and suppression
Nature · By Reebal W. Rafeh ·
The Brief
- Rafeh et al. used frequency-tagged fMRI to study selective attention.
- The study reports that attention relies on two independent neural mechanisms: target enhancement and surround suppression.
- The paper was published online in Nature Communications on 11 November 2026.
Why it matters
It suggests that enhancing an attended target and suppressing its surroundings are separate processes, which can inform how neuroscientists model and measure attention.
Who’s affected
- neuroscientists and cognitive scientists studying attention
- researchers using fMRI in vision and perception studies
- #attention
- #fmri
- #neuroscience
- #visual perception
- #frequency tagging
Nature Communications, Published online: 11 November 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-79329-4 Rafeh et al. use frequency-tagged fMRI to demonstrate that selective attention relies on dual, independent neural mechanisms for target enhancement and surround suppression, elaborating on…
Timeline
Published online in Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/s41467-026-79329-4)
nature.com
Frequency-tagged fMRI reveals dual mechanisms of attentional enhancement and suppression