Attention maps in the brain

Over 20 distinct cerebral cortical areas contain spatial map representations of the visual field. These retinotopic, or visuotopic, cortical areas occur not only in the occipital lobe but also in the parietal, temporal, and frontal lobes. The cognitive influences of visuospatial attention operate via these cortical maps and can support selection of multiple objects at the same time. In early visual cortical areas, spatial attention enhances responses of selected items and diminishes the responses to distracting items. In higher order cortex, the maps support a spatial indexing role, keeping track of the items to be attended. These maps also support visual short-term memory (VSTM) representations. In each hemisphere, all the known maps respond selectively to stimuli presented within the contralateral visual field. However, a hemispheric asymmetry emerges when the attentional or VSTM demands of a task become significant. In the parietal lobe, the right hemisphere visuotopic maps switch from coding only contralateral visual targets to coding memory and attention targets across the entire visual field. This emergent asymmetry has important implications for understanding hemispatial neglect syndrome, and supports a dynamic network form of the representational model of neglect. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:327-340. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1230 This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Neuroscience > Cognition.