Attention-related modulation of caudate neurons depends on superior colliculus activity

Abstract

Recent work has implicated the primate basal ganglia in visual perception and attention, in addition to their traditional role in motor control. The basal ganglia, especially the caudate nucleus 'head' (CDh) of the striatum, receive indirect anatomical connections from the superior colliculus, a midbrain structure that is known to play a crucial role in the control of visual attention. To test the possible functional relationship between these subcortical structures, we recorded CDh neuronal activity of macaque monkeys before and during unilateral superior colliculus (SC) inactivation in a spatial attention task. SC inactivation significantly altered the attention-related modulation of CDh neurons and strongly impaired the classification of task epochs based on CDh activity. Only inactivation of SC on the same side of the brain as recorded CDh neurons, not the opposite side, had these effects. These results demonstrate a novel interaction between SC activity and attention-related visual processing in the basal ganglia.

Incongruence effects in cross-modal emotional processing in autistic traits: An fMRI study

“…Importantly, a group * attend * emotion-valence inconsistency interaction was found in the left caudate. The caudate is part of the ventral striatum, which is an integral part of the frontostriatal circuitry that is implicated in perceptual choices, selective attention (Herman et al, 2020), and executive cognitive functions (Grahn et al, 2008). Our results further elucidated that depending on whether participants were instructed to attend to the face or voice, different patterns of the incongruence effect of emotion-valence were found between the two groups.…”

Exposure to Multicultural Context Affects Neural Response to Out-Group Faces: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

“…If so, for individuals reporting stronger Right Wing Authoritarianism ideologies, the correlated enhanced caudate activity might support selective attention to the valuable and rewarding in-group faces. Accordingly, the caudate seems specifically responsible for value-driven attentional orienting [93], and in particular, it is involved in the attentional capture by stimuli previously associated with social reward [94,95].…”

A neural mechanism for terminating decisions

“…Such interrogation is accomplished either overtly, via an eye movement, or through covert spatial attention. The role of SC in the former has long been appreciated, but a more recent body of work has revealed its critical role in the latter (Kustov and Robinson, 1996; Ignashchenkova et al, 2004; Bogadhi et al, 2021; Herman et al, 2020, 2018; Bollimunta et al, 2018b; Müller et al, 2005; Zénon and Krauzlis, 2012; Lovejoy and Krauzlis, 2010). We view our results and SC’s role in spatial attention as two sides of the same coin.…”