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The prefrontal cortex and the executive control of attention
Open accessAbstract
We review two studies aimed at understanding the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the control of attention. The first study examined which attentional functions are critically dependent on PFC by removing PFC unilaterally and transecting the forebrain commissures in two macaques. The monkeys fixated a central cue and discriminated the orientation of a colored target grating presented among colored distracter gratings in either the hemifield affected by the PFC lesion or the normal control hemifield. When the cue was held constant for many trials, task performance in the affected hemifield was nearly normal. However, performance was severely impaired when the cue was switched frequently across trials. The monkeys were unimpaired in a pop-out task with changing targets that did not require top-down attentional control. Thus, the PFC lesion resulted in selective impairment in the monkeys' ability to switch top-down control. In the second study, we used fMRI to investigate the neural correlates of top-down control in humans performing tasks identical to those used in the monkey experiments. Several fronto-parietal and posterior visual areas showed enhanced activation when attention was switched, which was greater on color cueing (top-down) trials relative to pop-out trials. Taken together, our findings indicate that both frontal and parietal cortices are involved in generating top-down control signals for attentive switching, which may then be fed back to visual processing areas. The PFC in particular plays a critical role in the ability to switch attentional control on the basis of changing task demands.
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“Although the neural mechanisms computing relevance are very poorly understood, lesion studies in monkeys and rats suggests that they depend on the frontal lobes. The studies implicate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and the orbital frontal cortex in this computation (sometimes referred to as a “credit assignment” computation) (Kolling et al., 2012; Rossi et al., 2”
From Attention, learning, and the value of information (2012) · cites this paper as Rossi et al., 2009
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Metadata
- Authors
- Rossi, A. F., Pessoa, L., Desimone, R., & Ungerleider, L. G.
- Affiliations
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research (US)
- Corresponding author
- Rossi, Andrew F.
- Pessoa, Luiz
- Desimone, Robert
- Ungerleider, Leslie G.
- Venue
- Experimental Brain Research
- Published
- 2008-11-22
- Volume
- 192
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 489-497
- ISSN
- 0014-4819 (ISSN-L)
- 1432-1106
- PMC
- PMC2752881
- OpenAlex
- W2047331899
- Cited by
- 378
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 29 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 7.92
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Experimental Brain Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH071589, Z01MH002035)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Keywords
- prefrontal cortex, top-down attentional control, attentional shift, executive function, frontoparietal cortex, hemispheric lateralization, macaque, functional MRI
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Attention, Brain Mapping, Cognition, Corpus Callosum, Cues, Denervation, Feedback, Functional Laterality, Macaca, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Mental Processes, Neural Pathways, Neuropsychological Tests, Parietal Lobe, Photic Stimulation, Psychomotor Performance, Visual Cortex, Visual Perception, Volition, Prefrontal Cortex
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