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Transient neural activity in human parietal cortex during spatial attention shifts

Nature Neuroscience volume 5, pages 995–1002 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Observers viewing a complex visual scene selectively attend to relevant locations or objects and ignore irrelevant ones. Selective attention to an object enhances its neural representation in extrastriate cortex, compared with those of unattended objects, via top-down attentional control signals. The posterior parietal cortex is centrally involved in this control of spatial attention. We examined brain activity during attention shifts using rapid, event-related fMRI of human observers as they covertly shifted attention between two peripheral spatial locations. Activation in extrastriate cortex increased after a shift of attention to the contralateral visual field and remained high during sustained contralateral attention. The time course of activity was substantially different in posterior parietal cortex, where transient increases in activation accompanied shifts of attention in either direction. This result suggests that activation of the parietal cortex is associated with a discrete signal to shift spatial attention, and is not the source of a signal to continuously maintain the current attentive state.

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Figure 1: Task and predictions.
Figure 2: Pattern of activation for a single participant resulting from a contrast specifying that the hold-contralateral and the shift-to-contralateral beta weights were greater than the hold-ipsilateral and the shift-to-ipsilateral beta weights.
Figure 3: Group random-effects analysis examining the consequences of directing attention to the left and right target streams.
Figure 4: Pattern of activation from a single participant identified with a contrast between the shift and hold beta weights.
Figure 5: Significant group activations from regions identified by contrasting shift and hold events in a group random effects GLM.
Figure 6: (a) Areas in right ITG and left IFS that exhibited a main effect of shifting attention and a main effect of location.
Figure 7: Pattern of activation from a subset of eight subjects who participated in the run-length version of the paradigm (Methods).

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Brawner, J. Gillen and X. Golay for technical assistance and V. Lamme, J.B. Sala, and S. Slotnick for valuable suggestions. This study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01-DA13165) to S.Y. and from the National Center for Research Resources, NIH (P41-RR15241) to the F.M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging (Kennedy Krieger Institute) in Baltimore. J.S. was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service, J.T.S. was supported by the National Eye Institute and the National Science Foundation, and R.L.C. was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Jens Schwarzbach

    Present address: F. C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Box 9101, NL-6500, HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands

  2. Robert L. Carlson

    Present address: Department of Psychology, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York, 13699, USA

  3. Steven Yantis, Jens Schwarzbach and John T. Serences: The first three authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 21218, Maryland, USA

    Steven Yantis, John T. Serences, Robert L. Carlson & Susan M. Courtney

  2. Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, 21205, Maryland, USA

    Steven Yantis, Michael A. Steinmetz & Susan M. Courtney

  3. Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 21218, Maryland, USA

    Jens Schwarzbach & Michael A. Steinmetz

  4. F. M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, 21205, Maryland, USA

    James J. Pekar & Susan M. Courtney

  5. Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, 21205, Maryland, USA

    James J. Pekar

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Yantis, S., Schwarzbach, J., Serences, J. et al. Transient neural activity in human parietal cortex during spatial attention shifts. Nat Neurosci 5, 995–1002 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn921

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