Influences of Long-Term Memory-Guided Attention and Stimulus-Guided Attention on Visuospatial Representations within Human Intraparietal Sulcus

Abstract

Human parietal cortex plays a central role in encoding visuospatial information and multiple visual maps exist within the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), with each hemisphere symmetrically representing contralateral visual space. Two forms of hemispheric asymmetries have been identified in parietal cortex ventrolateral to visuotopic IPS. Key attentional processes are localized to right lateral parietal cortex in the temporoparietal junction and long-term memory (LTM) retrieval processes are localized to the left lateral parietal cortex in the angular gyrus. Here, using fMRI, we investigate how spatial representations of visuotopic IPS are influenced by stimulus-guided visuospatial attention and by LTM-guided visuospatial attention. We replicate prior findings that a hemispheric asymmetry emerges under stimulus-guided attention: in the right hemisphere (RH), visual maps IPS0, IPS1, and IPS2 code attentional targets across the visual field; in the left hemisphere (LH), IPS0-2 codes primarily contralateral targets. We report the novel finding that, under LTM-guided attention, both RH and LH IPS0-2 exhibit bilateral responses and hemispheric symmetry re-emerges. Therefore, we demonstrate that both hemispheres of IPS0-2 are independently capable of dynamically changing spatial coding properties as attentional task demands change. These findings have important implications for understanding visuospatial and memory-retrieval deficits in patients with parietal lobe damage.

Differential Effects of Salient Visual Events on Memory‐Guided Attention in Adults and Children

“…Together with past work, our results suggest that the medial temporal lobe memory systems, fronto‐parietal orienting network, and prefrontal cognitive control systems that are implicated in memory‐guided attention (Goldfarb et al., ; Rosen et al., ; Stokes et al., ; Summerfield et al., ) are sufficiently mature in 7‐ to 12‐year‐olds to enable the use of past experience to guide attention‐orienting. This is consistent with work that suggests that the more posterior nodes of the cognitive control network located within the parietal lobe may play a particularly important role in coordinating the use of memory to guide attention (Rosen et al., ). These cortical areas reach maturity significantly earlier than the prefrontal nodes of the cognitive control network (Shaw et al., ), and may support memory‐guided attention in children.…”

“…Complementing contextual cuing effects, evidence from memory‐based orienting tasks also shows that scene‐based spatial memories influence attention. In these tasks, participants learn to associate scenes with specific spatial locations, either through repeatedly searching through the same scenes for objects hidden in a target location (Patai, Doallo, & Nobre, ; Salvato, Patai, & Nobre, ; Stokes, Atherton, Patai, & Nobre, ; Summerfield et al., ; Summerfield, Rao, Garside, & Nobre, ), or through identifying a subtle, localized change in the scene over several repetitions (Rosen, Stern, Michalka, Devaney, & Somers, , ; Rosen et al., ). When these scenes act as cues in a subsequent orienting task, they yield enhanced responses (Patai et al., ; Rosen et al., , ; Salvato et al., ; Stokes et al., ; Summerfield et al., , ) to targets appearing at the location associated with the scene relative to other, un‐cued locations.…”

Forget Me if You Can: Attentional capture by to-Be-remembered and to-Be-forgotten visual stimuli

“…The results of this comparison, however, revealed no difference in the standard deviations of RTs, 1 thus providing no evidence for the possibility that the residual attentional capture effect seen in the forget condition stemmed from an occasional failure to forget the earlier memorized object. With regard to the possibility that this residual capture effect was driven by a long-term memory representation, we note that while the repeated exposure and memorization of stimuli might indeed have led to an LTM representation which could potentially guide visual attention (Rosen, Stern, Michalka, Devaney, & Somers, 2015 ; Woodman, Carlisle, & Reinhart, 2013 ), this seems an unlikely account of the residual capture effect because any such LTM-guidance would be expected to occur for all distractors in the search task, thus precluding an LTM-driven capture effect as an explanation for the capture effect found only in invalid trials in the forget condition. By implication, it seems that the residual capture effect found in the forget condition is best explained in terms of an intentional but incomplete deactivation of the representation of the to-be-forgotten object.…”

The lateral intraparietal sulcus takes viewpoint changes into account during memory-guided attention in natural scenes

“…Most recently, researchers have started investigating mechanisms of attention control using more complex and realistic stimuli, such as pictures of natural scenes (Summerfield et al 2006 , 2011 ). In this framework, it has become apparent that long-term knowledge about the layout of objects in natural environments also plays a role in guiding spatial attention (Rosen et al 2015 , 2016 ; Summerfield et al 2006 ; see also Hutchinson and Turk-Browne 2012 ). Long-term memory (LTM) can provide us with predictive information about the likely location of objects, people, or animals in natural environments, resulting in the optimization of resources allocation, perception and—ultimately—behavior (Chun and Turk-Browne 2007 ; Hollingworth et al 2001 ; Hollingworth 2004 ; Olivers 2011 ; Patai et al 2012 ; Summerfield et al 2006 , 2011 ; see Wolfe and Horowitz 2017 , for a recent review).…”