title: Early recurrence and ongoing parietal driving during elementary visual processing.
abstract: Visual stimuli quickly activate a broad network of brain areas that often show reciprocal structural connections between them. Activity at short latencies (<100 ms) is thought to represent a feed-forward activation of widespread cortical areas, but fast activation combined with reciprocal connectivity between areas in principle allows for two-way, recurrent interactions to occur at short latencies after stimulus onset. Here we combined EEG source-imaging and Granger-causal modeling with high temporal resolution to investigate whether recurrent and top-down interactions between visual and attentional brain areas can be identified and distinguished at short latencies in humans. We investigated the directed interactions between widespread occipital, parietal and frontal areas that we localized within participants using fMRI. The connectivity results showed two-way interactions between area MT and V1 already at short latencies. In addition, the results suggested a large role for lateral parietal cortex in coordinating visual activity that may be understood as an ongoing top-down allocation of attentional resources. Our results support the notion that indirect pathways allow early, evoked driving from MT to V1 to highlight spatial locations of motion transients, while influence from parietal areas is continuously exerted around stimulus onset, presumably reflecting task-related attentional processes.
authors.affiliation: Functional Brain Mapping Lab, Department of Fundamental Neuroscience, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.|Perceptual Networks Group, Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Gijs
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Plomp
authors.affiliation: Brain and Language Lab, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Alexis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hervais-Adelman
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer, Control, and Management Engineering, University of Rome "Sapienza", Italy.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Astolfi
authors.affiliation: Functional Brain Mapping Lab, Department of Fundamental Neuroscience, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Christoph M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Michel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult