Visual environment tends to be stable over the short run. An immediately visited location often doesn't provide new information and can be safely inhibited, as exemplified by inhibition of return (IOR)—attention takes longer to return to a previously cued location. Attention selection at this inhibited location has been widely characterized as inferior, in which the target at the cued location has diminished salience, with lower rate of accumulation in the priority map for attention selection. We demonstrate here that an electrophysiology index of visual selection—the N2pc component—is delayed but enhanced at the cued than uncued location, and this enhancement in the N2pc amplitude predicts reduction in the behavioral IOR effect. By isolating a pure target N2pc, these results reveal an active attention enhancement mechanism that facilitates adaptive allocation of attention when a target appears at a previously cued location, potentially acting as a compensation mechanism for inhibition.

视觉环境在短期内趋于稳定。立即访问的位置通常不提供新的信息，并且可以安全地禁止访问，例如禁止返回（IOR）-注意需要更长的时间才能返回到先前提示的位置。在这个受抑制位置的注意力选择普遍被认为是劣等的，在这种情况下，提示位置的目标的显着性降低了，优先级图中用于注意力选择的累积率降低了。我们在这里证明，视觉选择的电生理指标-N2pc组件-被延迟，但在提示时比未提示的位置增强，并且N2pc幅度的这种增强预示着行为IOR效应的降低。通过隔离纯目标N2pc，