title: Voluntary orienting is dissociated from target detection in human posterior parietal cortex.
abstract: Human ability to attend to visual stimuli based on their spatial locations requires the parietal cortex. One hypothesis maintains that parietal cortex controls the voluntary orienting of attention toward a location of interest. Another hypothesis emphasizes its role in reorienting attention toward visual targets appearing at unattended locations. Here, using event-related functional magnetic resonance (ER-fMRI), we show that distinct parietal regions mediated these different attentional processes. Cortical activation occurred primarily in the intraparietal sulcus when a location was attended before visual-target presentation, but in the right temporoparietal junction when the target was detected, particularly at an unattended location.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology and Neurological Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, 4525 Scott Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, USA. mau@npg.wustl.edu
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Corbetta
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Kincade
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Ollinger
authors.forename: M P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: McAvoy
authors.forename: G L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Shulman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*