The Retinotopy of Visual Spatial Attention

Tootell, Roger B. H.; Hadjikhani, Nouchine; Hall, E.Kevin; Marrett, Sean; Vanduffel, Wim; Vaughan, J. Thomas; Dale, Anders M.

doi:10.1016/s0896-6273(00)80659-5

Cited by 668 publications

(524 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…The present study is also consistent with a recent report of objectbased attention in monkey V1 (40). These findings, taken together with Motter's (22) and other very recent findings (41)(42)(43), make clear that attention can have strong and specific effects in V1. The overall view that emerges suggests that V1 is not simply a passive, imageprocessing front end, as is often assumed.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

Functional MRI reveals spatially specific attentional modulation in human primary visual cortex

Somers

Dale

Seiffert

et al. 1999

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

606

361

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Selective visual attention can strongly inf luence perceptual processing, even for apparently low-level visual stimuli. Although it is largely accepted that attention modulates neural activity in extrastriate visual cortex, the extent to which attention operates in the first cortical stage, striate visual cortex (area V1), remains controversial. Here, functional MRI was used at high field strength (3 T) to study humans during attentionally demanding visual discriminations. Similar, robust attentional modulations were observed in both striate and extrastriate cortical areas. Functional mapping of cortical retinotopy demonstrates that attentional modulations were spatially specific, enhancing responses to attended stimuli and suppressing responses when attention was directed elsewhere. The spatial pattern of modulation reveals a complex attentional window that is consistent with object-based attention but is inconsistent with a simple attentional spotlight. These data suggest that neural processing in V1 is not governed simply by sensory stimulation, but, like extrastriate regions, V1 can be strongly and specifically inf luenced by attention.It has long been appreciated that selective attention can dramatically affect high-level visual perception (1). More recently, attention has been shown to influence low-level visual phenomena such as luminance detection (2, 3), motion perception (4, 5), orientation discrimination (6), contour detection (7), hyperacuity (6), and even "preattentive" visual search (8). These modulations of perception appear to result from selective spatial attention, because they depend on the location of directed attention. These studies exploited the fact that attention and eye position need not be directed to the same location; that is, attention may be covert (2). Under the same fixation conditions attention may be either directed toward a test stimulus, directed elsewhere, or not directed. Striking differences have been revealed when performance under directed attention is compared with performance when attention is engaged in a highly distracting task, such as identifying letters in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream (5, 8, 9).These phenomena indicate that attention operates at low levels of visual processing, but they do not identify the specific cortical areas in which processing is influenced by attention. This question of the locus of selection is fundamental to the cognitive neuroscience of attention. Theories suggest that processing of the attended representation is enhanced and͞or that processing of unattended representations is suppressed. Enhancement and suppression may act directly on cells in the lower tiers of visual cortex that code retinotopic location or may act at higher cortical areas (10). One long-held theory, the spotlight model of spatial selection (2, 11), suggests that attention is directed to a connected visual field region that contains no topological holes. A competing theory, objectbased selection (12), suggests that attention is directed to ...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

Functional MRI reveals spatially specific attentional modulation in human primary visual cortex

Somers

Dale

Seiffert

et al. 1999

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

606

361

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In particular, our results reveal heterogeneity across topographically organized PPC subregions, with 1) IPS0 displaying a distinct pattern of activity from IPS4, IPS5, and SPL1, and 2) IPS1-3 not exhibiting differential responses across retrieval conditions (though future studies with additional power are required to draw definitive conclusions about the relative effects of retrieval outcomes on responses in these areas). Thus, while IPS and SPL regions have been associated with top-down spatial attention in prior work (Tootell et al 1998;Silver et al 2005;Konen and Kastner 2008a;Kastner 2009, but see SPL1 in Szczepanski et al 2010), the observation of heterogeneity here is broadly consistent with increasing evidence for a diversity of functions across topographically organized parietal maps Kastner 2008a, 2008b;Sheremata et al 2010). Given that we did not record eye movements, another possible source of functional heterogeneity is that eye movements during retrieval might have differentially affected fMRI responses (Konen and Kastner 2008a).…”

Section: Dorsal Ppc: Lateral Ips Versus Splsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…The boundaries of visual field representations in posterior parietal areas IPS0-5 and SPL1 were defined using established phase-encoded retinotopic mapping methods (Engel et al 1994;Tootell et al 1998;Silver et al 2005;Swisher et al 2007;Konen and Kastner 2008a;Bressler and Silver 2010;Szczepanski et al 2010). Maps were defined with a coherence threshold of 0.15 for each subject, a value that is consistent with prior work (e.g., Brewer et al 2005).…”

Section: Attention Mapping Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This procedure defined, within each hemisphere of each subject, maps along the IPS0-IPS5 and in the SPL1 associated with the allocation of top-down spatial attention (Tootell et al 1998;Sereno et al 2001;Silver et al 2005;Swisher et al 2007;Konen and Kastner 2008a;Silver and Kastner 2009). The attention maps were then compared with the retrieval effects observed in these participants (see Methods and Results sections), allowing us to directly evaluate which, if any, regions containing topographic attention maps are recruited during episodic retrieval.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Functional Heterogeneity in Posterior Parietal Cortex Across Attention and Episodic Memory Retrieval

et al. 2012

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While attention is critical for event memory, debate has arisen regarding the extent to which posterior parietal cortex (PPC) activation during episodic retrieval reflects engagement of PPCmediated mechanisms of attention. Here, we directly examined the relationship between attention and memory, within and across subjects, using functional magnetic resonance imaging attentionmapping and episodic retrieval paradigms. During retrieval, 4 functionally dissociable PPC regions were identified. Specifically, 2 PPC regions positively tracked retrieval outcomes: lateral intraparietal sulcus (latIPS) indexed graded item memory strength, whereas angular gyrus (AnG) tracked recollection. By contrast, 2 other PPC regions demonstrated nonmonotonic relationships with retrieval: superior parietal lobule (SPL) tracked retrieval reaction time, consistent with a graded engagement of top-down attention, whereas temporoparietal junction displayed a complex pattern of belowbaseline retrieval activity, perhaps reflecting disengagement of bottom-up attention. Analyses of retrieval effects in PPC topographic spatial attention maps (IPS0-IPS5; SPL1) revealed that IPS5 and SPL1 exhibited a nonmonotonic relationship with retrieval outcomes resembling that in the SPL region, further suggesting that SPL activation during retrieval reflects top-down attention. While demands on PPC attention mechanisms vary during retrieval attempts, the present functional parcellation of PPC indicates that 2 additional mechanisms (mediated by latIPS and AnG) positively track retrieval outcomes.

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“…E-mail: ribeiro@icb.usp.br Attention may be considered to be the neural activity, which allows people to "selectively process information in the environment that is relevant to their behavioral goals" (1). The processing of a selected stimulus or stimuli in a selected spatial region is facilitated and/or the processing of concurrent stimuli is inhibited (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%