Both the posterior parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex are associated with the control of eye movements and attention, but the specific contributions of each area are poorly understood. Here we compare the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) using a memory saccade task in which a salient distractor was flashed at a variable timing and location during the memory delay. We show that, while the two areas had similar responses to target selection, they had very different contributions to distractor suppression. Responses to the salient distractor were more strongly suppressed and more closely correlated with performance in the dlPFC relative to LIP. Consistent with these findings, reversible inactivation of the dlPFC produced much larger increases in distractibility relative to inactivation of LIP. Along with their shared contributions to eye movement control, the two areas also have important functional specializations and differences in their internal circuitry.

Highlights d Anesthesia decouples signaling along apical dendrites of layer 5 pyramidal neurons d This suppresses the influence of feedback arriving at the distal dendrites d mAChRs and thalamic activation of mGluRs are necessary for coupling d The mechanism reconciles two competing explanations for the action of anesthesia

Recent breakthroughs in neurobiology indicate that the time is ripe to understand how cellular-level mechanisms are related to conscious experience. Here, we highlight the biophysical properties of pyramidal cells, which allow them to act as gates that control the evolution of global activation patterns. In conscious states, this cellular mechanism enables complex sustained dynamics within the thalamocortical system, whereas during unconscious states, such signal propagation is prohibited. We suggest that the hallmark of conscious processing is the flexible integration of bottom-up and top-down data streams at the cellular level. This cellular integration mechanism provides the foundation for Dendritic Information Theory, a novel neurobiological theory of consciousness Global Dynamics and Local Mechanisms of Consciousness HighlightsRecent breakthroughs in the study of cellular and circuit level aspects of consciousness have led to the conclusion that cortical pyramidal neurons have a central role in the mechanisms of consciousness.

While numerous studies have explored the mechanisms of reward-based decisions (the choice of action based on expected gain), few have asked how reward influences attention (the selection of information relevant for a decision). Here we show that a powerful determinant of attentional priority is the association between a stimulus and an appetitive reward. A peripheral cue heralded the delivery of reward or no reward (these cues are termed herein RCϩ and RCϪ, respectively); to experience the predicted outcome, monkeys made a saccade to a target that appeared unpredictably at the same or opposite location relative to the cue. Although the RC had no operant associations (did not specify the required saccade), they automatically biased attention, such that an RCϩ attracted attention and an RCϪ repelled attention from its location. Neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) encoded these attentional biases, maintaining sustained excitation at the location of an RCϩ and inhibition at the location of an RCϪ. Contrary to the hypothesis that LIP encodes action value, neurons did not encode the expected reward of the saccade. Moreover, at odds with an adaptive decision process, the cue-evoked biases interfered with the required saccade, and these biases increased rather than abating with training. After prolonged training, valence selectivity appeared at shorter latencies and automatically transferred to a novel task context, suggesting that training produced visual plasticity. The results suggest that reward predictors gain automatic attentional priority regardless of their operant associations, and this valence-specific priority is encoded in LIP independently of the expected reward of an action.