title: Distinct representations of attentional control during voluntary and stimulus-driven shifts across objects and locations.
abstract: Efficient interaction with the sensory environment requires the rapid reallocation of attentional resources between spatial locations, perceptual features, and objects. It is still a matter of debate whether one single domain-general network or multiple independent domain-specific networks mediate control during shifts of attention across features, locations, and objects. Here, we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging to directly compare the neural mechanisms controlling attention during voluntary and stimulus-driven shifts across objects and locations. Subjects either maintained or switched voluntarily and involuntarily their attention to objects located at the same or at a different visual location. Our data demonstrate shift-related activity in multiple frontoparietal, extrastriate visual, and default-mode network regions, several of which were commonly recruited by voluntary and stimulus-driven shifts between objects and locations. However, our results also revealed object- and location-selective activations, which, moreover, differed substantially between voluntary and stimulus-driven attention. These results suggest that voluntary and stimulus-driven shifts between objects and locations recruit partially overlapping, but also separable, cortical regions, implicating the parallel existence of domain-independent and domain-specific reconfiguration signals that initiate attention shifts in dependence of particular demands.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke-University, Leipziger Str. 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany. christian.stoppel@med.ovgu.de
authors.forename: Christian Michael
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Stoppel
authors.forename: Carsten Nicolas
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Boehler
authors.forename: Hendrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Strumpf
authors.forename: Ruth Marie
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Krebs
authors.forename: Hans-Jochen
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Heinze
authors.forename: Jens-Max
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hopf
authors.forename: Mircea Ariel
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Schoenfeld
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen