Neural Correlates of the Spatial and Expectancy Components of Endogenous and Stimulus-Driven Orienting of Attention in the Posner Task

Abstract

Voluntary orienting of visual attention is conventionally measured in tasks with predictive central cues followed by frequent valid targets at the cued location and by infrequent invalid targets at the uncued location. This implies that invalid targets entail both spatial reorienting of attention and breaching of the expected spatial congruency between cues and targets. Here, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to separate the neural correlates of the spatial and expectancy components of both endogenous orienting and stimulus-driven reorienting of attention. We found that during endogenous orienting with predictive cues, there was a significant deactivation of the right Temporal-Parietal Junction (TPJ). We also discovered that the lack of an equivalent deactivation with nonpredictive cues was matched to drop in attentional costs and preservation of attentional benefits. The right TPJ showed equivalent responses to invalid targets following predictive and nonpredictive cues. On the contrary, infrequent-unexpected invalid targets following predictive cues specifically activated the right Middle and Inferior Frontal Gyrus (MFG-IFG). Additional comparisons with spatially neutral trials demonstrated that, independently of cue predictiveness, valid targets activate the left TPJ, whereas invalid targets activate both the left and right TPJs. These findings show that the selective right TPJ activation that is found in the comparison between invalid and valid trials results from the reciprocal cancelling of the different activations that in the left TPJ are related to the processing of valid and invalid targets. We propose that left and right TPJs provide "matching and mismatching to attentional template" signals. These signals enable reorienting of attention and play a crucial role in the updating of the statistical contingency between cues and targets.

Foresight beats hindsight: The neural correlates underlying motor preparation in the pro‐/anti‐cue paradigm

“…These clusters were found in parietal and frontal cortex, overlapping with the typical core nodes of the dorsal and ventral attention network. Matching the characteristics of the behavioral paradigm, dorsal attention network nodes in the posterior parietal cortex and the precentral sulcus (presumably the frontal eye field) were activated, most likely reflecting the orientation of attention toward the location of the upcoming target stimulus, which was shown in many previous neuroimaging studies using traditional spatial orienting paradigms (Doricchi, Macci, Silvetti, & Macaluso, 2010; Hopfinger, Buonocore, & Mangun, 2000; Kincade, Abrams, Astafiev, Shulman, & Corbetta, 2005). Similarly, ventral attention network nodes in inferior parietal and frontal cortex were activated, in particular, during anti‐cue trials, most likely reflecting the control over “distracting” anti‐cues and the reorientation toward the target stimulus.…”

Structural Variability within Frontoparietal Networks and Individual Differences in Attentional Functions: An Approach Using the Theory of Visual Attention

“…It has been suggested that the preferential activation of the right hemisphere leads to leftward attentional bias, but the functional lateralization is by no means universal and does not apply to the entire frontoparietal attentional networks (Doricchi et al, 2010;Shulman et al, 2010). Interestingly, functional neuroimaging studies not only point to hemispheric asymmetries in the representation of visual space in VSTM and spatial attention, especially within the posterior parietal cortex, but also indicate task-dependent and topographic region-dependent properties of these asymmetries.…”

Contextual Knowledge Configures Attentional Control Networks

“…Existing studies that have examined the brain networks underlying detection of behaviorally relevant stimuli have generally defined "relevance" by target features, for example, targets in unexpected locations (Arrington et al, 2000;Kincade et al, 2005;Vossel et al, 2006;Indovina and Macaluso 2007;Doricchi et al, 2010), target-colored distracters (Serences et al, 2005;Hu et al, 2009), or target-relevant cues (Shulman et al, 2009;Geng and Mangun, 2011). These studies have identified a right-lateralized ventral frontoparietal network, including the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (Corbetta and Shulman, 2002;Fox et al, 2006).…”

“…In addition to frequent (but less emphasized) coactivation with right TPJ, left TPJ has been hypothesized to orient attention toward stimuli that match a target "template" (Doricchi et al, 2010), relative target saliency , or episodic memories (particularly verbal ones) (Cabeza et al, 2008;Ciaramelli et al, 2008;Hutchinson et al, 2009;Ravizza et al, 2011). These hypothesized roles for left TPJ share the theme of encoding non-visuospatial, task-relevant features.…”