Rapid inversion of singleton distractor representations underlies learned attentional suppression

In visually complex and dynamically changing environments, humans must often filter out salient but task-irrelevant stimuli. Prior work shows that with repeated exposure to color singleton distractors, individuals can learn to divert attention away from these salient items. However, the neural mechanisms supporting such attentional suppression remain unclear. The present study examined the temporal trajectories of singleton distractor representations during visual search to address this gap. Using multivariate pattern analyses of EEG data in human subjects (N = 40, 30 females, 10 males), we identified two clusters of decodable singleton distractor representations: an early cluster from 100-200 ms and a later cluster from 200-400 ms. Temporal generalization analyses showed that the later representations were inverted versions of the early ones. Importantly, stronger late, but not early representations, predicted faster search responses, suggesting that the later signals support distractor suppression. This representational inversion facilitates suppressing singleton distractors in the spatial priority map. Comparing decoding evidence across locations revealed that singleton distractor locations were suppressed relative to non-singleton distractors. Moreover, comparing the neural coding of locations revealed that the spatial organization in the singleton distractor neural space was inverted relative to that in the target neural space. Together, these findings reveal a rapid representational inversion underlying salient distractor suppression at the onset of visual search. This inversion of singleton distractor signals was likely driven by top-down control mechanisms that transform bottom-up saliency signals, producing an inverted arrangement of target and distractor information within a shared neural space. Significance StatementA primary goal of attention is to select relevant information while ignoring irrelevant input from the external environment. Although the mechanisms of attentional enhancement have been extensively studied, the mechanisms underlying attentional suppression remain less well understood. While prior work has made important progress in identifying when attentional suppression is engaged, the neural mechanisms that implement suppression are still unclear. Here, we show that neural representations of salient singleton distractors undergo a rapid inversion approximately 200 ms after search onset. These inverted representations can subsequently be read out as suppression signals during the computation of spatial priorities. Together, our findings suggest that transforming initial pop-out distractor signals into an inverted representational format might drive rapid attentional suppression and support goal-directed visual search.