title: Frontoparietal activity with minimal decision and control.
abstract: In the human brain, a well known frontoparietal circuit, including lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), presupplementary motor area/anterior cingulate cortex (pre-SMA/ACC), and both the superior and inferior parietal cortex, is involved in cognitive control. One proposal is that the frontoparietal cortex holds a flexible description of attended or task-relevant information, biasing processing in favor of this information in many different parts of the brain. Here, we separate frontoparietal coding of attended information from its active use in behavior. In two experiments, subjects watch a stream of visual stimuli in a fixed location. In the first experiment, there is no task to perform; in the second, decisions are orthogonal to the occurrence of new stimulus events. Even in these simple circumstances, we find that attended stimulus changes give extensive activation of LPFC, pre-SMA/ACC and parietal cortex, whereas unattended changes do not. Even without behavior to control, these classical "control" regions are active in simple update of attended information.
authors.affiliation: Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge CB2 2EF, United Kingdom. psyhonn@nus.edu.sg
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hon
authors.forename: Russell A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Epstein
authors.forename: Adrian M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Owen
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Duncan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology