Divergent neural mechanisms of selective attention in dichotic listening and binocular rivalry perception: Evidence from functional brain network analysis

• Published in: NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Vol. 320; p. 121464
• Main Authors: Zeng, Xianqing, Huang, Yan, Wang, Keyu, Wang, Jiujiu, Meng, Ming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 15.10.2025; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Adult; Attention; Attention - physiology; Auditory pathways; Auditory Perception - physiology; Binocular rivalry; Binocular vision; Brain - physiology; Brain Mapping - methods; Brain research; Dichotic listening; Dichotic Listening Tests; Dynamic functional connectivity; Executive function; Executive Function - physiology; Experiments; Female; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Humans; Information processing; Inter-/intra-subject correlation; Listening; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Motion pictures; Nerve Net - diagnostic imaging; Nerve Net - physiology; Neural networks; Paradigms; Radiology/Diagnostic Imaging; Selective attention; Sensorimotor system; Sensory integration; Vision, Binocular - physiology; Visual pathways; Visual perception; Visual Perception - physiology; Young Adult; China; Selective attention; Inter-/intra-subject correlation; Dynamic functional connectivity; Dichotic listening; Binocular rivalry
• ISSN: 1053-8119; 1095-9572; 1095-9572
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121464

•In DL, attention to the identical narratives enhanced RECN/SMN synchrony.•In DL, AudN processed auditory input, whereas in BR, LN/HVN processed visual input.•In BR, attention to character movies enhanced LN−HVN FC.•In BR, increased LN−HVN FC was correlated with longer PDD of character movies. Although selective attention similarly modulates bistable perception in auditory and visual domains, its neural mechanisms remain unclear. Using fMRI within a naturalistic paradigm—dichotic listening (DL) with narrative stimuli and binocular rivalry (BR) with movie clips—we combined multiscale ICA-based brain network analysis (inter-/intra-subject correlation and dynamic FC) to investigate attentional mechanisms in DL and BR. In DL, when participants attended to the same narrative, the inter-SC of both right executive control network (RECN) and sensorimotor network (SMN) increased compared to when they attended to different narratives, indicating that the RECN and SMN were involved in the attentional mechanism of DL. Regardless of attentional content consistency, the auditory network (AudN) showed significant synchrony in both inter-SC and intra-SC analyses, suggesting stimulus-driven processing in DL. For BR, significant inter- and intra-SC were only observed in networks related to stimulus-driven processing, namely the higher visual network (HVN) and language network (LN), while no selective attention-related cognitive networks were identified. Furthermore, no dFC effects in the DL task were found. However, in the BR condition, the FC between the HVN and LN was significantly enhanced when attending to characters versus architecture, and the difference was robustly positively correlated with the difference in perceptual dominance duration of character-related movies between the two conditions. In summary, our results demonstrate that the modulation mechanisms of selective attention differ substantially between DL and BR. The former involves executive control, whereas the latter relies on neural circuits supporting perceptual processing.