Control networks and hemispheric asymmetries in parietal cortex during attentional orienting in different spatial...

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Neuroimaging
• Spatial Cognition

Background:

• Spatial attention can be anchored in viewer-centered, environment-centered, or object-centered reference frames.
• Understanding the neural basis of attentional control across different reference frames is crucial for cognitive neuroscience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural systems mediating attentional control in viewer-centered versus object-centered reference frames.
• To compare brain activity patterns associated with voluntary shifts of spatial attention in these two competing frames.

Main Methods:

• Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure hemodynamic brain responses.
• Healthy volunteers performed a visual discrimination task after being cued to locations in either viewer-centered or object-centered space.

Main Results:

• A fronto-parietal control network was activated by attention-directing cues in both reference frames.
• Increased neural activity was observed bilaterally in the intraparietal sulcus, anterior cingulate cortex, and frontal eye fields during voluntary attention shifts.
• Hemispheric asymmetry in parietal cortex was more pronounced for object-centered attention shifts compared to viewer-centered shifts, with greater left parietal activity.

Conclusions:

• A largely overlapping, bilateral cortical network supports spatial attention orientation in multiple coordinate systems.
• The left intraparietal sulcus plays a specific role in object-centered spatial attention.
• These findings provide neuroimaging evidence supporting clinical observations in patients with parietal lesions.