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Methylphenidate alters selective attention by amplifying salience

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Abstract

Rationale

Methylphenidate, the most common treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), is increasingly used by healthy individuals as a “smart drug” to enhance cognitive abilities like attention. A key feature of (selective) attention is the ability to ignore irrelevant but salient information in the environment (distractors). Although crucial for cognitive performance, until now, it is not known how the use of methylphenidate affects resistance to attentional capture by distractors.

Objectives

The present study aims to clarify how methylphenidate affects distractor suppression in healthy individuals.

Methods

The effect of methylphenidate (20 mg) on distractor suppression was assessed in healthy subjects (N = 20), in a within-subject double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. We used a visuospatial attention task with target faces flanked by strong (faces) or weak distractors (scrambled faces).

Results

Methylphenidate increased accuracy on trials that required gender identification of target face stimuli (methylphenidate 88.9 ± 1.4 [mean ± SEM], placebo 86.0 ± 1.2 %; p = .003), suggesting increased processing of the faces. At the same time, however, methylphenidate increased reaction time when the target face was flanked by a face distractor relative to a scrambled face distractor (methylphenidate 34.9 ± 3.73, placebo 26.7 ± 2.84 ms; p = .027), suggesting enhanced attentional capture by distractors with task-relevant features.

Conclusions

We conclude that methylphenidate amplifies salience of task-relevant information at the level of the stimulus category. This leads to enhanced processing of the target (faces) but also increased attentional capture by distractors drawn from the same category as the target.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI grant number 453-09-002 and the James McDonnell scholar award.

Conflict of interest

No commercial sponsors were involved in this study. The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Dr Buitelaar has been for the past 3 years a consultant to, member of the advisory board of, and/or speaker for Janssen Cilag BV, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Schering-Plough, UCB, Shire, Novartis, and Servier. He is neither an employee of nor a shareholder in any of these companies. He receives no other financial or material support, including expert testimony, patents, and royalties. The other authors have no conflict of interest to report.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University Centre, Reinier Postlaan 12, 6526 GC, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    Niels ter Huurne & Jan Buitelaar

  2. Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Kapittelweg 29, 6525 EN, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    Niels ter Huurne, Marieke van der Schaaf, Ole Jensen & Roshan Cools

  3. Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Radboudumc, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, P.O. Box 9101 (204), 6500 HB, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    Sean James Fallon & Jan Buitelaar

  4. Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, OX13UD, UK

    Sean James Fallon

  5. Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Martine van Schouwenburg

  6. Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Martine van Schouwenburg

  7. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Martine van Schouwenburg

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  1. Niels ter Huurne
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  2. Sean James Fallon
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  3. Martine van Schouwenburg
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  4. Marieke van der Schaaf
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  5. Jan Buitelaar
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  6. Ole Jensen
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  7. Roshan Cools
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Correspondence to Niels ter Huurne.

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ter Huurne, N., Fallon, S.J., van Schouwenburg, M. et al. Methylphenidate alters selective attention by amplifying salience. Psychopharmacology 232, 4317–4323 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-015-4059-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-015-4059-y

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