Attentional load leads to distinct changes in early and late cortical processing of target visibility under visual masking.

• Attentional load and masking lead to modulations in early and late ERP components correlated with the changes in behavioral performance values. • The modulations in each component were not uniform and distinct in terms of dependency on masking and attentional load. • The diverse nature of masking and attentional influences on sensory processing. Visual masking and attentional selection play important roles in controlling information processing for perception. Using an experimental design combining metacontrast with attentional load, we investigated the time course of changes in event-related potentials under different attentional load and masking conditions. The behavioral results indicated significant effects of attentional load on masking functions (i.e., masking strength as a function of stimulus onset asynchrony between target and mask). The analyses of neural activities revealed significant effects of masking and attentional load on early components located over occipital and parieto-occipital scalp sites. There were also significant modulations in the late positivity range centered over centro-parietal electrodes. However, the nature of modulations in early and late components was different. These findings overall highlight the diverse nature of masking and attentional influences on visual processing, particularly suggesting that attentional load in the visual field may have distinct effects at different stages of perceptual processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]