A central role for the lateral prefrontal cortex in goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention
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Attention is the process that selects which sensory information is preferentially processed and ultimately reaches our awareness. Attention, however, is not a unitary process; it can be captured by unexpected or salient events (stimulus driven) or it can be deployed under voluntary control (goal directed), and these two forms of attention are implemented by largely distinct ventral and dorsal parieto-frontal networks. For coherent behavior and awareness to emerge, stimulus-driven and goal-directed behavior must ultimately interact. We found that the ventral, but not dorsal, network can account for stimulus-driven attentional limits to conscious perception, and that stimulus-driven and goal-directed attention converge in the lateral prefrontal component of that network. Although these results do not rule out dorsal network involvement in awareness when goal-directed task demands are present, they point to a general role for the lateral prefrontal cortex in the control of attention and awareness.
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PPC in childhood may support attentional modulation.
“PPC in childhood may support attentional modulation (Asplund et al., 2010) as has been found to be predominant at this age during AS performance (Hwang et al., 2010).”
From Effects of incentives, age, and behavior on brain activation during inhibitory control: a longitudinal fMRI study (2015) · cites this paper as Asplund et al., 2010
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“(Asplund et al., 2010), social cognition(Weissman et al., 2008), and WM (Owen et al., 2005).”
- Authors
- Asplund, C. L., Todd, J. J., Snyder, A. P., & Marois, R.
- Affiliations
- Vanderbilt University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Asplund, Christopher L
- Marois, René
- Venue
- Nature Neuroscience
- Published
- 2010-03-07
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 507-512
- ISSN
- 1097-6256 (ISSN-L)
- 1546-1726
- PMC
- PMC2847024
- OpenAlex
- W2019815181
- Cited by
- 384
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 43 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 27 · 2014: 29 · 2013: 27 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 16.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Vanderbilt University
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH70776, R01MH070776)
- 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
- lateral prefrontal cortex, top-down attention, bottom-up attention, awareness, attentional control
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Female, Goals, Humans, Male, Photic Stimulation, Psychomotor Performance, Reaction Time, Prefrontal Cortex
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