title: Transcranial Doppler assessment of cerebral blood flow velocity during visual spatial selective attention in humans.
abstract: Blood flow velocities of the posterior cerebral arteries were obtained while healthy subjects were engaged in a visual spatial attention task. Experimental runs consisted of series of stimuli comprised of four elements (two left and two right of a central fixation point) presented briefly in blue against a purple screen. After a period of passive viewing a left or right pointing arrow indicated the visual half-field to be attended by the subjects in order to detect identical symbols on the attended side. Relative to the passive viewing condition a marked increase of flow was seen in both posterior cerebral arteries during the attention period. No differential increase of flow as a function of attended field was detected. These results are discussed in comparison with recent positron-emission tomography (PET) and electrophysiological data obtained with the same task.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Medical School Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schnittger
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Johannes
authors.forename: T F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Münte
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001783:Blood Flow Velocity; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D018608:Ultrasonography, Doppler; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*