Category learning drives cortical attentional gain to diagnostic dimensions of perceptual information.

Category learning for alien identity in a two-band auditory fMRI paradigm selectively prioritizes the identity-diagnostic frequency band, but not alien size, in expert participants.

• Why it matters: Flexible perceptual expertise depends on discovering regularities and reweighting information as tasks change, but it is unclear whether category learning specifically boosts attention to diagnostic perceptual dimensions.
• What they did: Participants performed two prospective auditory category learning tasks linking a novel soundscape to four alien identity classes and two alien size classes, with identity requiring learned patterned input in one of two simultaneous frequency bands. fMRI tested whether identity-relevant information in one band is prioritized over simultaneous uninformative information in the other, and neural selectivity was compared to an independent selective-attention task.
• The result: Only participants expert at alien identity showed neural prioritization of the identity-diagnostic band, which persisted even when that information became irrelevant during size categorization. The identity-evoked selectivity matched independent explicit attention to pure tones in one band, and learning trajectories left corresponding neural fingerprints, indicating category learning can drive attentional gain to diagnostic input dimensions.

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