Attentional modulation of neural activity in the macaque inferior temporal cortex during global and local processing

To examine whether visual attention to global and local features of visual stimuli modulates neural activity in the monkey visual cortex, we applied positron emission tomography techniques to monkeys while they were discriminating either global or local features of visual stimuli. The posterior inferior temporal cortex was more activated in discriminating global features than in discriminating local ones, whereas the anterior inferior temporal cortex was more activated in discriminating local features than in discriminating global ones. The results suggest that a functional difference exists in terms of processing of global and local features within the inferior temporal cortex.