title: Neural substrates of perceptual enhancement by cross-modal spatial attention.
abstract: Orienting attention involuntarily to the location of a sudden sound improves perception of subsequent visual stimuli that appear nearby. The neural substrates of this cross-modal attention effect were investigated by recording event-related potentials to the visual stimuli using a dense electrode array and localizing their brain sources through inverse dipole modeling. A spatially nonpredictive auditory precue modulated visual-evoked neural activity first in the superior temporal cortex at 120-140 msec and then in the ventral occipital cortex of the fusiform gyrus 15-25 msec later. This spatio-temporal sequence of brain activity suggests that enhanced visual perception produced by the cross-modal orienting of spatial attention results from neural feedback from the multimodal superior temporal cortex to the visual cortex of the ventral processing stream.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. jmcd@sfu.ca
authors.forename: John J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: McDonald
authors.forename: Wolfgang A
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Teder-Sälejärvi
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Di Russo
authors.forename: Steven A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Hillyard
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008397:Masks; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013028:Space Perception; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*