Default mode network mediates low‐frequency fluctuations in brain activity and behavior during sustained attention
Human Brain Mapping July 29, 2022 Hang Zhang, Shiyou Yang, Yang Qiao et al. 27 citations
Spontaneous low-frequency fluctuations in sustained attention, which cause cognitive and behavioral lapses, originate in the default-mode network (DMN). Analysis of two independent fMRI and behavior datasets shows that neural fluctuations in the DMN mediate behavioral reaction-time fluctuations during sustained attention. The DMN's increased amplitude of fluctuation correlates with behavioral fluctuation specifically in the 0.01-0.1 Hz frequency range, not at lower or higher frequencies. This pattern appears during both auditory and visual sustained attention and replicates across datasets. These findings reveal the DMN as a neural source of attention fluctuation, extending the former view that the DMN is simply deactivated during cognitive tasks.