Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
J Neurosci. 2010 Oct 27;30(43):14330-9. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4248-09.2010.
Visual attention selects task-relevant information from scenes to help achieve behavioral goals. Attention can be deployed within multiple domains to select specific spatial locations, features, or objects. Recent evidence has shown that voluntary shifts of attention in multiple domains are consistently associated with transient increases in cortical activity in medial superior parietal lobule, suggesting that this may be the source of a domain-independent control signal that initiates the reconfiguration of attention. To investigate this hypothesis, we used fMRI to measure changes in cortical activation while human subjects shifted attention between spatial locations or between colors at a location. Univariate multiple regression analysis revealed a common, domain-independent transient signal [in posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and prefrontal cortex] time-locked to shifts of attention in both domains. However, multivariate pattern classification conducted on the cortical surface revealed that the spatiotemporal pattern of activity within PPC differed reliably for spatial and feature-based attention shifts. These results suggest that the posterior parietal cortex is a common hub for the control of attention shifts but contains subpopulations of neurons with domain-specific tuning for cognitive control.
视觉注意力从场景中选择与任务相关的信息，以帮助实现行为目标。注意力可以在多个领域中部署，以选择特定的空间位置、特征或对象。最近的证据表明，多个领域中注意力的自愿转移与中顶叶上回皮层活动的短暂增加一致相关，这表明这可能是发起注意力重新配置的域独立控制信号的来源。为了研究这个假设，我们使用 fMRI 测量了人类受试者在空间位置之间或位置上的颜色之间转移注意力时皮层激活的变化。单变量多元回归分析揭示了一种共同的、与域无关的瞬态信号[在后顶叶皮层（PPC）和前额叶皮层]，与两个域中的注意力转移时间锁定。然而，在皮层表面进行的多元模式分类显示，PPC 内活动的时空模式对于空间和基于特征的注意力转移可靠地不同。这些结果表明，后顶叶皮层是注意力转移控制的共同枢纽，但包含具有特定于认知控制的域调谐的神经元亚群。
