Spatiotemporal dynamics of attentional orienting and reorienting revealed by fast optical imaging in occipital and parietal cortices

• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117244
• Publication Date: 2020-08-14T01:52:21Z
• Authors: Giorgia Parisi; Chiara Mazzi; Elisabetta Colombari; Antonio M. Chiarelli; Brian A. Metzger; Carlo A. Marzi; Silvia Savazzi
• Keywords: Disengagement theory; Task-positive network; Attention network

The mechanisms of visuospatial attention are mediated by two distinct fronto-parietal networks: a bilateral dorsal network (DAN), involved in the voluntary orientation attention, and ventral (VAN), lateralized to right hemisphere, reorienting unexpected, but relevant, stimuli. present study consisted aims: 1) characterize spatio-temporal dynamics 2) examine predictive interactions between within systems along with visual areas, using fast optical imaging combined Granger causality. Data were collected from young healthy participants performing discrimination task Posner-like paradigm. Functional analyses revealed parietal (i.e. regions included DAN) recruitment during orienting, highlighting recursive interplay specific cortex. Moreover, we found that both networks active reorienting, together cortex, mutual interaction among which, turn, predicts subsequent activity. For attentional our findings indicate areas encode disengagement attended location trigger reorientation unexpected location. Ventral activity could instead reflect post-perceptual maintenance internal model generate keep updated task-related expectations.