Brain Attention Mechanisms in Perception and Performance
Abstract
Previous functional neuroimaging studies have implicated a fronto-parietal network in the control of visual attention. Here, we describe a series of attentional cueing studies which further investigate how this network allocates attentional resources to behaviorally relevant stimuli. In the first study, this network was shown to be involved in both spatial and non-spatial attention, with certain areas playing a greater role in spatial attention. The second study revealed that medial subregions of this network play a specific role in attentional orienting, while lateral subregions participate in more general aspects of cue processing, such as cue interpretation. A follow-up ERP cueing study demonstrated that frontal activity precedes parietal, consistent with theories that frontal regions communicate task goals to posterior brain areas. Another pair of cueing studies investigated how target discrimination difficulty modulates attention-related brain activity. Discrimination difficulty increased target-related activity; however, fronto- parietal responses to cues providing advance information as to the likely difficulty of an upcoming target discrimination did not vary as a function of expected difficulty. Lastly, in a study of attention to the global vs. local features of visual objects, the presence of distracting information during target discrimination resulted in reactivation of portions of the attentional orienting network.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA422630
Entities
People
- M. G. Woldorff
Organizations
- Duke University