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Top-down modulation of early sensory cortex

G L Shulman1, M Corbetta, R L Buckner

  • 1Washington University School of Medicine, Department of Neurology and Neurological Surgery, USA.

Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
|April 1, 1997
PubMed
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Active visual processing can modulate early visual cortex blood flow, but does not broadly suppress irrelevant sensory areas. This suggests task-specific top-down influences on brain activity.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Brain Imaging

Background:

  • Human visual information processing studies often use positron emission tomography (PET) to measure brain activity.
  • Previous research has explored differences between passive viewing and active visual discrimination tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To reanalyze data from nine PET studies to investigate blood flow changes during active visual processing compared to passive viewing.
  • To determine if active visual processing increases blood flow in early visual cortex and decreases it in auditory and somatosensory areas.

Main Methods:

  • Reanalysis of data from nine existing positron emission tomography (PET) studies.
  • Comparison of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during passive viewing versus active visual discrimination tasks.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Statistical analysis to identify significant increases in medial visual regions and decreases in auditory/somatosensory cortices.

    • Main Results:

    • Six out of nine studies showed significant modulation of medial visual regions, indicating top-down influences on early visual cortex.
    • Task dependencies in modulations suggest selective, rather than non-selective, processing.
    • Replicable decreases were observed near auditory cortex (Brodmann area 41/42) in some studies, but not consistently.
    • Decreases were found in insular regions and parietal areas (BA 40, SII), but not primary somatosensory cortex.

    Conclusions:

    • Active visual processing can selectively modulate activity in early visual cortex via top-down mechanisms.
    • The findings contradict models predicting broad suppression of task-irrelevant sensory cortical areas.
    • Brain activity modulation during visual tasks is complex and task-dependent, involving specific rather than general inhibitory processes.