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In the human brain, a well known frontoparietal circuit, including lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), presupplementary motor area/ anterior cingulate cortex (pre-SMA/ACC), and both the superior and inferior parietal cortex, is involved in cognitive control. One proposal is that the frontoparietal cortex holds a flexible description of attended or task-relevant information, biasing processing in favor of this information in many different parts of the brain. Here, we separate frontoparietal coding of attended information from its active use in behavior. In two experiments, subjects watch a stream of visual stimuli in a fixed location. In the first experiment, there is no task to perform; in the second, decisions are orthogonal to the occurrence of new stimulus events. Even in these simple circumstances, we find that attended stimulus changes give extensive activation of LPFC, pre-SMA/ACC and parietal cortex, whereas unattended changes do not. Even without behavior to control, these classical "control" regions are active in simple update of attended information.

Cognitive impairment is common in patients with schizophrenia, and even those with relatively preserved function perform worse than healthy volunteers (HVs) on attentional tasks. This is consistent with the hypothesis that connectivity – in the frontoparietal network (FPN) activated during attention – is disrupted in schizophrenia. We examined attentional effects on connectivity in the FPN, in schizophrenia, using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Twenty-three HVs and 19 first-episode schizophrenia patients were scanned during a simple visual change test, known to activate the FPN, in which attention was monitored and directed with an orthogonal flicker-detection task. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) of evoked responses was used to assess effective connectivity – and its modulation by changes in the attended stimulus dimension – in the following network: higher visual area; temporoparietal junction (TPJ); intraparietal sulcus (IPS); dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. The final MEG analysis included 18 HVs and 14 schizophrenia patients. While all participants were able to maintain attention, HVs responded slightly, but non-significantly, more accurately than schizophrenia patients. HVs, but not schizophrenia patients, exhibited greater cortical responses to attended visual changes. Bayesian model comparison revealed that a DCM with attention dependent changes in both top-down and bottom-up connections best explained responses by patients with schizophrenia, while in HVs the best model required only bottom-up changes. Quantitative comparison of connectivity estimates revealed a significant group difference in changes in the right IPS-TPJ connection: schizophrenia patients showed relative reductions in connectivity during attended stimulus changes. Crucially, this reduction predicted lower intelligence. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that functional dysconnections in the FPN contribute to cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.