Frontal and Parietal Cortical Interactions with Distributed Visual Representations during Selective Attention and Action Selection

16 Pages Posted: 3 May 2022

See all articles by Natalie Neilssen

Natalie Neilssen

University of Oxford

Mark G Stokes

University of Oxford - Department of Experimental Psychology

Anna C Nobre

Yale University; University of Oxford

Matthew Rushworth

University of Oxford - Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging

Date Written: October 16, 2013

Abstract

Using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we studied how distributed visual representations in human occipitotemporal cortex are modulated by attention and link their modulation to concurrent activity in frontal and parietal cortex. We detected similar occipitotemporal patterns during a simple visuoperceptual task and an attention-to-working-memory task in which one or two stimuli were cued before being presented among other pictures. Pattern strength varied from highest to lowest when the stimulus was the exclusive focus of attention, a conjoint focus, and when it was potentially distracting. Although qualitatively similar effects were seen inside regions relatively specialized for the stimulus category and outside, the former were quantitatively stronger. By regressing occipitotemporal pattern strength against activity elsewhere in the brain, we identified frontal and parietal areas exerting top-down control over, or reading information out from, distributed patterns in occipitotemporal cortex. Their interactions with patterns inside regions relatively specialized for that stimulus category were higher than those with patterns outside those regions and varied in strength as a function of the attentional condition. One area, the frontal operculum, was distinguished by selectively interacting with occipitotemporal patterns only when they were the focus of attention. There was no evidence that any frontal or parietal area actively inhibited occipitotemporal representations even when they should be ignored and were suppressed. Using MVPA to decode information within these frontal and parietal areas showed that they contained information about attentional context and/or readout information from occipitotemporal cortex to guide behavior but that frontal regions lacked information about category identity.

Note:
Funding Information: This work was supported by the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the National Institute for Health Research Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. N.N. is a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders.

Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Ethics Approval Statement: After complete description of the study to the subjects, written informed consent was obtained in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The study protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Oxford.

Suggested Citation

Neilssen, Natalie and Stokes, Mark G and Nobre, Anna C and Rushworth, Matthew, Frontal and Parietal Cortical Interactions with Distributed Visual Representations during Selective Attention and Action Selection (October 16, 2013). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4072542 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4072542

Natalie Neilssen

University of Oxford

Mark G Stokes

University of Oxford - Department of Experimental Psychology

Oxford, OX3 9DU
United Kingdom

Anna C Nobre (Contact Author)

Yale University ( email )

493 College St
New Haven, CT CT 06520
United States

HOME PAGE: http://brainandcognition.org/

University of Oxford ( email )

Wu Tsai Institute and Psychology Department
Yale University
New Haven, CT 06510
United States

HOME PAGE: http://brainandcognition.org/

Matthew Rushworth

University of Oxford - Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging ( email )

Oxford
United Kingdom

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
13
Abstract Views
96
PlumX Metrics