title: A multimodal cortical network for the detection of changes in the sensory environment.
abstract: Sensory stimuli undergoing sudden changes draw attention and preferentially enter our awareness. We used event-related functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify brain regions responsive to changes in visual, auditory and tactile stimuli. Unimodally responsive areas included visual, auditory and somatosensory association cortex. Multimodally responsive areas comprised a right-lateralized network including the temporoparietal junction, inferior frontal gyrus, insula and left cingulate and supplementary motor areas. These results reveal a distributed, multimodal network for involuntary attention to events in the sensory environment. This network contains areas thought to underlie the P300 event-related potential and closely corresponds to the set of cortical regions damaged in patients with hemineglect syndromes.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, and Toronto Western Research Institute, MP14-322, 399 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5T 2S8, Canada.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Downar
authors.forename: A P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Crawley
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Mikulis
authors.forename: K D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Davis
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology; D005073:Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*