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Updated: Jun 26, 2025

Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control
Published on: July 5, 2015
Distinct feedforward and feedback pathways for cell-type specific attention effects
Georgios Spyropoulos1, Marius Schneider2, Jochem van Kempen3
1Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Abstract:
Selective attention is thought to depend on enhanced firing activity in extrastriate areas. Theories suggest that this enhancement depends on selective inter-areal communication via gamma (30-80 Hz) phase-locking. To test this, we simultaneously recorded from different cell types and cortical layers of macaque V1 and V4. We find that while V1-V4 gamma phase-locking between local field potentials increases with attention, the V1 gamma rhythm does not engage V4 excitatory-neurons, but only fast-spiking interneurons in L4 of V4. By contrast, attention enhances V4 spike-rates in both excitatory and inhibitory cells, most strongly in L2/3. The rate increase in L2/3 of V4 precedes V1 in time. These findings suggest enhanced signal transmission with attention does not depend on inter-areal gamma phase-locking and show that the endogenous gamma rhythm has cell-type- and layer-specific effects on downstream target areas. Similar findings were made in the mouse visual system, based on opto-tagging of identified interneurons.
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