Attentional modulation of parieto-occipital cortical responses: implications for hemispatial neglect

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine whether preattentive and attentive visual processing, the cognitive psychological dichotomy on normal vision, indeed activate the parieto-occipital systems differentially as suggested by recent neuropsychological research. The activation paradigms consisted of feature detection and discrimination of line orientation, and visual fixation, which corresponded to preattentive, attention-requiring, and baseline conditions, respectively. The detection versus fixation contrast revealed activation sites in the right lateral prefrontal cortex and bilateral occipital lobes, whereas the discrimination versus fixation contrast showed broader bilateral activations extending from the occipital lobes through the parietal lobes, prefrontal cortex, thalamus, basal ganglia and upper brainstem. In the discrimination versus detection contrast, significant activations were observed in the right superior and inferior parietal lobules as well as in the subcortical structures. These findings were consistently demonstrated both at intra- and inter-subject levels. The present study provides further evidence to delineate neural substrate for the two distinct modes of visual processing and helps us to understand the neuropsychological mechanism underlying visual attention disorders.