Nature Neuroscience 9, 1071 - 1076 (2006)
Published online: 2 July 2006; | doi:10.1038/nn1734
LIP responses to a popout stimulus are reduced if it is overtly ignoredAnna E Ipata1, Angela L Gee1, Jacqueline Gottlieb1, 2, James W Bisley1, 4, 5 &
Michael E Goldberg1, 2, 3, 51
Mahoney Center for Brain and Behavior, Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Drive, New York, New York 10032, USA. 2
Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, 1051 Riverside Drive, New York, New York 10032, USA. 3
Department of Neurology, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, 710 West 168th Street, New York, New York 10032, USA. 4
Present address: Department of Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. 5
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence should be addressed to Anna E Ipata ai2019@columbia.edu Bright objects capture our attention by virtue of 'popping out' from their surroundings. This correlates with strong responses in cortical areas thought to be important in attentional allocation. Previous studies have suggested that with the right mindset or training, humans can ignore popout stimuli. We studied the activity of neurons in monkey lateral intraparietal area while monkeys performed a visual search task. The monkeys were free to move their eyes, and a distractor, but never the search target, popped out. On trials in which the monkeys made a saccade directly to the search target, the popout distractor evoked a smaller response than the non-popout distractors. The intensity of the response to the popout correlated inversely with the monkeys' ability to ignore it. We suggest that this modulation corresponds to a top-down mechanism that the brain uses to adjust the parietal representation of salience.
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