Common fronto-parietal activity in attention, memory, and consciousness: shared demands on integration?
Fronto-parietal activity has been frequently observed in fMRI and PET studies of attention, working memory, and episodic memory retrieval. Several recent fMRI studies have also reported fronto-parietal activity during conscious visual perception. A major goal of this review was to assess the degree of anatomical overlap among activation patterns associated with these four functions. A second goal was to shed light on the possible cognitive relationship of processes that relate to common brain activity across functions. For all reviewed functions we observed a consistent and overlapping pattern of brain activity. The overlap was most pronounced for the bilateral parietal cortex (BA 7 and BA 40; close to the intraparietal sulcus), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (right BA 9 and left BA 6). The common fronto-parietal activity will be discussed in terms of processes related to integration of distributed representations in the brain.
Naghavi
Hamid Reza
HR
Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Roozbeh Hospital, South Kargar Street, 13185/1741 Tehran, Iran. HamidReza.Naghavi@psy.umu.se
Nyberg
Lars
L
D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*