Neuronal responses in area 7a to multiple stimulus displays: II. responses are suppressed at the cued location

Everyday visual scenes contain a variety of stimuli that vary in their significance. The companion paper demonstrates that neurons in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) are capable of encoding the spatial locations of the salient stimulus in multiple stimulus scenes. The present experiment sought to address how neuronal responses to stimuli appearing in the receptive field are modulated after attention has been drawn to one of multiple stimuli in a visual scene. We recorded from area 7a of the PPC in monkeys trained to do a spatial version of a match-to-sample task. The results show that neuronal responses are greatly suppressed when stimuli appear at previously attended locations. No reduction in responsiveness is observed for locations where stimuli had previously appeared but did not draw attention. These results support the hypothesis that area 7a has a role in redirecting attention to stimuli appearing at novel, unattended locations.