Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2014 Jan;26(1):63-80. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00461. Epub 2013 Aug 12.
Eye gaze is a powerful cue for orienting attention in space. Studies examining whether gaze and symbolic cues recruit the same neural mechanisms have found mixed results. We tested whether there is a specialized attentional mechanism for social cues. We separately measured BOLD activity during orienting and reorienting attention following predictive gaze and symbolic cues. Results showed that gaze and symbolic cues exerted their influence through the same neural networks but also produced some differential modulations. Dorsal frontoparietal regions in left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and bilateral MT(+)/lateral occipital cortex only showed orienting effects for symbolic cues, whereas right posterior IPS showed larger validity effects following gaze cues. Both exceptions may reflect the greater automaticity of gaze cues: Symbolic orienting may require more effort, while disengaging attention during reorienting may be more difficult following gaze cues. Face-selective regions, identified with a face localizer, showed selective activations for gaze cues reflecting sensory processing but no attentional modulations. Therefore, no evidence was found linking face-selective regions to a hypothetical, specialized mechanism for orienting attention to gaze cues. However, a functional connectivity analysis showed greater connectivity between face-selective regions and right posterior IPS, posterior STS, and inferior frontal gyrus during gaze cueing, consistent with proposals that face-selective regions may send gaze signals to parts of the dorsal and ventral frontoparietal attention networks. Finally, although the default-mode network is thought to be involved in social cognition, this role does not extend to gaze orienting as these regions were more deactivated following gaze cues and showed less functional connectivity with face-selective regions during gaze cues.
眼动是在空间中引导注意力的有力线索。研究注视和符号线索是否招募相同的神经机制的结果喜忧参半。我们测试了是否存在一种专门的社交线索注意机制。我们分别测量了在预测注视和符号线索引导和重新引导注意力期间的 BOLD 活动。结果表明，注视和符号线索通过相同的神经网络发挥作用，但也产生了一些差异调节。左内顶叶沟（IPS）和双侧 MT（+）/外侧枕叶的背侧额顶叶区域仅对符号线索显示出定向效应，而右后 IPS 在注视线索后显示出更大的有效性效应。这两个例外可能反映了注视线索的更大的自动性：符号定向可能需要更多的努力，而在重新定向期间分散注意力可能更困难注视线索。使用面孔定位器识别的面孔选择性区域显示出对注视线索的选择性激活，反映了感觉处理，但没有注意力调节。因此，没有证据表明将面孔选择性区域与假设的、专门用于注视线索引导注意力的机制联系起来。然而，功能连接分析表明，在注视线索期间，面孔选择性区域与右后 IPS、后 STS 和下额前回之间的连接性更强，这与以下观点一致，即面孔选择性区域可能将注视信号发送到背侧和腹侧额顶叶注意力网络的部分区域。最后，尽管默认模式网络被认为与社会认知有关，但这种作用并不延伸到注视定向，因为这些区域在注视线索后更加去激活，并且在注视线索期间与面孔选择性区域的功能连接性较小。
