Functional architecture of spatial attention in the parietal cortex of the behaving monkey

Functional architectures facilitate orderly transmittal of representations between cortices, allow for local interactions between neurons, and ensure a uniform distribution of feature representations with respect to larger-scale topographies. We sought to correlate such topographies with internal cognitive states. A psychophysical task for which the monkey was required to detect a change in one of two identical peripheral expanding flow fields tested for spatial shifts of attention. The monkey was cued as to which flow would change with a small cue near the fixation points. Reaction time data indicate that the monkey's performance in the optic flow detection task depended on the location of the cue. Using optical imaging of intrinsic signals, we show that a monkey's internally generated locus of attention is correlated with an 800-860 microm patchy topological architecture across the cortical surface of the inferior parietal lobule. The attentional patches vary in location but are stable in spatial frequency. The patches are embedded in a larger-scale and stable representation of eye position. Trial-by-trial analysis of the images indicates that the organizational scheme with simultaneous stable and variable subcomponents occurs within the experiment of 1 d, as well as across days. This novel functional architecture is the first to be correlated with attentional mechanisms and could support a fine-scale functional architecture underlying hemispatial neglect, an attentional deficit caused by parietal lesions.