Attention Modulates the Blood Oxygen Level Dependent Response in the Primary Visual Cortex measured with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Jäncke, Lutz; Mirzazade, Shahram; Shah, N. Jon

doi:10.1007/s001140050575

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 11 publications

(13 reference statements)

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“…This is in good agreement with other studies using attentional modulation (13,39,40). In some of those studies, it was also found that attentional modulation also affects the activity of the primary visual cortex (V1/V2), which could be supported by our study as well.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

“…The known linear dependency of regional cerebral blood flow on word presentation rate, as measured by positron emission tomography (PET; 10), is also lacking in an fMRI experiment (11,12). Furthermore, the BOLD response is dependent on attentional effort (13,14) and on the motivation of the subjects (15).In summary, there are a lot of factors affecting the shape, duration, and intensity of the BOLD response in …”

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confidence: 99%

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Assessment of reliability in functional imaging studies

Specht

Willmes

Shah

et al. 2003

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

121

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Purpose:To investigate the reliability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an approach for mapping and quantifying reliably activated voxels was developed. Materials and Methods:First, a SPM99 analysis was performed, and the resulting statistical maps were taken as the basis for subsequent analyses of reliability. Several approaches were demonstrated using 1) a voxel-wise intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC); 2) an analysis of scatter plots, calculating the correlation of contrast t-values for pairs of activation maps; and 3) the ratio of overlapping volumes as suggested in the literature. The methods were applied to an fMRI study in which subjects were asked to vary their attentional effort during watching a flickering checkerboard pattern with varying letters in the center. The subjects had to ignore or attend to the presentation, or they had to detect a target letter within the checkerboard. Results:The imaging data showed good reliability in terms of ICC for regions of visual processing, as well as for frontal areas, especially in the letter detection task. Furthermore, the size of reliable clusters depended on the presumed attentional effort of the subjects. Conclusion:Application of the method demonstrated that the activation due to visual stimulation could also be detected very consistently during a no-attend condition, but the reliability of the activations were best during the attended tasks. THIS PAPER DESCRIBES statistical techniques employed for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that allow assessment of the reliability of activations. The detected signal change in the time course caused by the BOLD effect (blood oxygenation level dependence) is an indirect measurement of neural activity. The BOLD effect can be attenuated because of several underlying technical, physiological, and psychological phenomena. The signal change of about 2%-5% is not much higher than the general noise components in the fMRI time series. The amount of activation can also be affected by remaining motion after realignment, as noted by Casey et al (1) in a comparison of fMRI results across four institutes, whereas the activation maps are in general similar between institutes, modalities, and analysis methods (2).However, use of the fMRI technique for clinical purposes requires reliable results within single subjects measured at different times, for comparisons between subjects or patients, as well as for diagnostic examinations. Aguirre and coworkers (3) compared the variability of BOLD responses within and between subjects and found a higher variability in the shape of responses between subjects than within. McGonigle et al (4) investigated the same subject in several repeated measurements and concluded that single-subject results could lead to erroneous interpretations. This should be taken into account in preoperative planning for which fMRI is becoming more and more important (5). The relationship between neural activity and the signal change is also still a matter of discussion. Arthurs ...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of reliability in functional imaging studies

Specht

Willmes

Shah

et al. 2003

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

121

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“…The selective visual attention task produced significantly increased activation in the occipital cortex, the left precuneus cortex, the right superior and inferior parietal cortex, the cingulate cortex, and the right prefrontal cortex. Similar activity in the primary visual cortex was shown by Jäncke et al [1999c] when subjects were required to attend to visual stimuli. Martinez et al [1999] combined fMRI and EEG results and hypothesized that the primary visual cortex modulation found with fMRI may represent a delayed, reentrant feedback from higher visual areas or sustained biasing during attention, because the sensory input to the primary visual cortex measured with EEG (evoked potentials) was not modulated by attention.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Human prefrontal and sensory cortical activity during divided attention tasks

Loose¹,

Kaufmann²,

Auer³

et al. 2003

Human Brain Mapping

117

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In our natural environment, the ability to divide attention is essential since we attend simultaneously to a number of sensory modalities, e.g., to visual and auditory stimuli. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study brain activation while a divided attention task was performed. Brain activation was also assessed under selective attention. Fourteen healthy male subjects aged between 19 and 28 years underwent fMRI studies using gradient EPI sequences. Cingulate activation was evident in all attention tasks. Focusing attention on one modality (visual or auditory) increased the activity in the corresponding primary and secondary sensory area. When attention is divided between both modalities, the activation in the sensory areas is decreased, possibly due to a limited capacity of the system for controlled processing. Left prefrontal activation, however, was evident selectively during the divided attention task. The present results suggest that this area may be important in the execution of controlled processing when attention is divided between two sources of information. These results support the view that the prefrontal cortex is involved in the central executive system and controls attention and information flow.

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“…By the same reasoning, attentive processing is expected to generate greater increases in activation in higher-tier areas, which are less activated under passiveviewing conditions. In support of this, although attention-related increases of the BOLD-response have been reported in V1, they are generally small (Gandhi, Heeger, & Boynton, 1999;Ja Èncke, Mirzazade, & Shah, 1999;Somers, Dale, Seiffert, & Tootell, 1999;Watanabe et al, 1998). Furthermore, attention to motion has been shown to produce weak blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD)-response increases in V1, more marked increases in V5, and strong increases in posterior parietal cortex .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…It has been suggested that suppression effects should be prevalent in lower-tier visual areas, which are activated to near maximum by physical stimulus presentation alone (especially with physically intense stimuli), leaving more room for attentional suppression of activity than for enhancement (Posner & Dehaene, 1994). Although attentional selection by location (Gandhi et al, 1999;Martinez et al, 1999, Somers et al, 1999 and features (Ja Èncke et al, 1999;Watanabe et al, 1998) leads to increased activation in striate cortex, the increases were small, especially when compared with higher-tier visual processing areas . A recent study of spatial-attentional selection demonstrated specific facilitatory and inhibitory effects of spatial attention throughout the retinotopic visual areas.…”

Section: Involvement Of Posterior Visual Areas In Dimensional Changementioning

confidence: 99%

A Fronto-Posterior Network Involved in Visual Dimension Changes

Pollmann

Weidner

Müller

et al. 2000

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

115

103

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Objects characterized by a unique visual feature may pop out of their environment. When participants have to search for such “odd-one-out” targets, detection is facilitated when targets are consistently defined within the same feature dimension (e.g., color) compared with when the target dimension is uncertain (e.g., color or motion). Further, with dimensional uncertainty, there is a cost when a given target is defined in a different dimension to the preceding target, relative to when the critical dimension remains the same. Behavioral evidence suggests that a target dimension change involves a shift of attention to the new dimension. The present fMRI study revealed increased activation in the left frontopolar cortex, as well as in posterior visual areas of the dorsal and ventral streams, specific to changes in the target dimension. In contrast, activation in the striate cortex was decreased. This pattern suggests control of cross-dimensional attention shifts by the frontopolar cortex, modulating visual cortical processing by increased activation in higher-tier visual areas and suppression of activation in lower-tier areas.

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Attention Modulates the Blood Oxygen Level Dependent Response in the Primary Visual Cortex measured with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Cited by 20 publications

References 11 publications

Assessment of reliability in functional imaging studies

Assessment of reliability in functional imaging studies

Human prefrontal and sensory cortical activity during divided attention tasks

A Fronto-Posterior Network Involved in Visual Dimension Changes

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