title: Effects of cholinergic enhancement on visual stimulation, spatial attention, and spatial working memory.
abstract: We compared behavioral and neural effects of cholinergic enhancement between spatial attention, spatial working memory (WM), and visual control tasks, using fMRI and the anticholinesterase physostigmine. Physostigmine speeded responses nonselectively but increased accuracy selectively for attention. Physostigmine also decreased activations to visual stimulation across all tasks within primary visual cortex, increased extrastriate occipital cortex activation selectively during maintained attention and WM encoding, and decreased parietal activation selectively during maintained attention. Finally, lateralization of occipital activation as a function of the visual hemifield toward which attention or memory was directed was decreased under physostigmine. In the case of attention, this effect correlated strongly with a decrease in a behavioral measure of selective spatial processing. Our results suggest that, while cholinergic enhancement facilitates visual attention by increasing activity in extrastriate cortex generally, it accomplishes this in a manner that reduces expectation-driven selective biasing of extrastriate cortex.
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. p.bentley@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bentley
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Husain
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Dolan
mesh_terms: D000109:Acetylcholine / Q000378:metabolism*; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002800:Cholinesterase Inhibitors / Q000494:pharmacology*; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010830:Physostigmine / Q000494:pharmacology; D012016:Reference Values; D013028:Space Perception / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D015854:Up-Regulation / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000378:metabolism; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D002800:Cholinesterase Inhibitors; D010830:Physostigmine; D000109:Acetylcholine