Cortical Mechanisms of Cognitive Control for Shifting Attention in Vision and Working Memory

Abstract

Organisms operate within both a perceptual domain of objects and events, and a mnemonic domain of past experiences and future goals. Each domain requires deliberate selection of taskrelevant information, through deployments of external (perceptual) and internal (mnemonic) attention, respectively. Little is known about the control of attention shifts in working memory, or whether voluntary control of attention in these two domains is subserved by a common or by distinct functional networks. We used human functional MRI to examine the neural basis of cognitive control while participants shifted attention in vision and in working memory. We found that these acts of control recruit in common a subset of the dorsal frontoparietal attentional control network, including the medial superior parietal lobule, intraparietal sulcus, and superior frontal sulcus/gyrus. Event-related multivoxel pattern classification reveals, however, that these regions exhibit distinct spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity during internal and external shifts of attention, respectively. These findings constrain theoretical accounts of selection in working memory and perception by showing that populations of neurons in dorsal frontoparietal network regions exhibit selective tuning for acts of cognitive control in different cognitive domains.

Feature-based and spatial attentional selection in visual working memory

“…Similarities have been observed with respect to behavioral consequences and neural networks (e.g., Griffin & Nobre, 2003;Nee & Jonides, 2009;Tamber-Rosenau et al, 2011). In light of this evidence, one might question whether making a distinction between external and internal attention is appropriate at all.…”

“…However, there are also notable differences between the two domains of attentional orienting. For example, neuroimaging studies have found an additional involvement of certain medial and lateral prefrontal areas and stronger activations in parietal regions when the focus of attention is controlled within VWM (Nee & Jonides, 2009;Nobre et al, 2004;Tamber-Rosenau et al, 2011). Moreover, internal attention has also been shown to exhibit distinct behavioral characteristics: Unlike external shifts of attention, internal shifts of attention appear not to be influenced by the initial physical distance of the encoded objects, and beyond a certain threshold time, additional time for internal shifts does not yield additional benefits (Tanoue & Berryhill, 2012).…”

“…Attentional orienting in these two domains will in the following sections be referred to as internal and external attention (Chun, Golomb, & Turk-Browne, 2011;Kiyonaga & Egner, 2013). Previous research has shown that internal and external attention recruit a largely overlapping neural network involving parietal, frontal, and occipital areas (Nee & Jonides, 2009;Nobre et al, 2004;Tamber-Rosenau, Esterman, Chiu, & Yantis, 2011), and that they are strikingly similar with respect to the benefits and costs resulting from valid and invalid cueing (Astle, Scerif, Kuo, & Nobre, 2009;Griffin & Nobre, 2003). Building on this demonstration of a high degree of correspondence, in the present experiments we investigated whether internal attention is also similar to external attention with regard to the type of information that can be used to guide attention.…”

Resting-state activity in the left executive control network is associated with behavioral approach and is increased in substance dependence

“…Our study did find minor group differences in the parietal cortex, but most of the parietal lobe showed no group differences. Whereas DLPFC is implicated in goal-directed behavior, parietal cortex is more involved in directing attention towards salient places, objects, or items in working memory (Curtis and D'Esposito, 2003;Seeley et al, 2007;Tamber-Rosenau et al, 2011). This pattern of findings perhaps suggests that at rest SDI and controls do not differ on lower-level attention aspects of the ECN, but instead, groups differ on higher-level goaldirection and abstract reasoning that is more often associated with DLPFC.…”

In search of the focus of attention in working memory: 13 years of the retro-cue effect

“…Moreover, representations in WM are not all in the same state of accessibility, and not all are equally relevant for the current task goals (Oberauer & Hein, 2012;Olivers, Peters, Houtkamp, & Roelfsema, 2011). Investigating how an attentional set can be applied to the representations actively maintained in mind can help shed light onto the control mechanisms of WM and how its contents can be flexibly updated, strengthened, and/or discarded when information about their relevance becomes available (Tamber-Rosenau, Esterman, Chiu, & Yantis, 2011). This special issue honors Steve Yantis and his many contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms of the control of attention.…”