Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Rome, Italy.
Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Imaging e Scienze Cliniche, Università Gabriele D'Annunzio, Chieti, Italy.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 Oct 15;43(15):4529-4539. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25970. Epub 2022 Jun 13.
Visuospatial attention is strongly lateralized, with the right hemisphere commonly exhibiting stronger activation and connectivity patterns than the left hemisphere during attentive processes. However, whether such asymmetry influences inter-hemispheric information transfer and behavioral performance is not known. Here we used a region of interest (ROI) and network-based approach to determine steady-state fMRI functional connectivity (FC) in the whole cerebral cortex during a leftward/rightward covert visuospatial attention task. We found that the global FC topology between either ROIs or networks was independent on the attended side. The side of attention significantly modulated FC strength between brain networks, with leftward attention primarily involving the connections of the right visual network with dorsal and ventral attention networks in both the left and right hemisphere. High hemispheric functional segregation significantly correlated with faster target detection response times (i.e., better performance). Our findings suggest that the dominance of the right hemisphere in visuospatial attention is associated with an hemispheric functional segregation that is beneficial for behavioral performance.
视空间注意具有强烈的侧化性，在注意过程中，右半球通常比左半球表现出更强的激活和连通模式。然而，这种不对称是否会影响半球间的信息传递和行为表现尚不清楚。在这里，我们使用感兴趣区域（ROI）和基于网络的方法来确定在左侧/右侧隐蔽视空间注意任务期间整个大脑皮层的静息态功能磁共振成像（fMRI）功能连接（FC）。我们发现，无论是 ROI 还是网络之间的全局 FC 拓扑结构都与被关注的一侧无关。注意力的一侧显著调节了脑网络之间的 FC 强度，左侧注意力主要涉及右视觉网络与左右半球背侧和腹侧注意力网络的连接。高半球功能分离与更快的目标检测反应时间（即更好的表现）显著相关。我们的发现表明，在视空间注意中右半球的优势与有利于行为表现的半球功能分离有关。
