Voluntary attention modulates fMRI activity in human MT-MST.
How does voluntary attention to one attribute of a visual stimulus affect the neural processing of that stimulus? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the attentional modulation of neural activity in the human homolog of the MT-MST complex, which is known to be involved in the processing of visual motion. Using a visual stimulus containing both moving and stationary dots, we found significantly more MT-MST activation when subjects attended to the moving dots than when they attended to the stationary dots, even though the visual stimulus was identical during the two conditions.
O'Craven
K M
KM
The Rowland Institute for Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
Rosen
B R
BR
Kwong
K K
KK
Treisman
A
A
Savoy
R L
RL
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008875:Middle Aged; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014836:Volition