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Topographic maps of multisensory attention - PubMed

  • ️Fri Jan 01 2010

Topographic maps of multisensory attention

Jeffrey S Anderson et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010.

Abstract

The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) region is uniquely situated at the intersection of visual, somatosensory, and auditory association cortices, ideally located for processing of multisensory attention. We examined the internal architecture of the IPS region and its connectivity to other regions in the dorsal attention and cinguloinsular networks using maximal connectivity clustering. We show with resting state fMRI data from 58 healthy adolescent and young adult volunteers that points of maximal connectivity between the IPS and other regions in the dorsal attention and cinguloinsular networks are topographically organized, with at least seven maps of the IPS region in each hemisphere. Distinct clusters of the IPS exhibited differential connectivity to auditory, visual, somatosensory, and default mode networks, suggesting local specialization within the IPS region for different sensory modalities. In an independent task activation paradigm with 16 subjects, attention to different sensory modalities showed similar functional specialization within the left intraparietal sulcus region. The default mode network, in contrast, did not show a topographical relationship between regions in the network, but rather maximal connectivity in each region to a single central cluster of the other regions. The topographical architecture of multisensory attention may represent a mechanism for specificity in top-down control of attention from dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbitofrontal cortex and may represent an organizational unit for multisensory representations in the brain.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.

Maximal connectivity clusters for the left IPS region of the attention control network. Three (Upper) and six (Lower) cluster conditions are shown. In other regions of the network, each voxel's time series is correlated with the mean time series of each left IPS cluster, and colored to correspond to the cluster with which it showed highest correlation. Slice positions are MNI: z = −15, 15, 35, 55, and 65. All brain images are in radiological format, with patient left on image right. The left IPS region for which the original clustering was performed is identified by arrows.

Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.

Proposed functional specialization of the intraparietal sulcus region. Labels indicate brain regions that exhibited highest correlation to the specified clusters. Slice location: z = 50.

Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.

Proposed functional specialization of the intraparietal sulcus region is confirmed by task activation data. All images are slice location z = 50. The first image shows the connectivity parcellation from the prior figure. The other five images show activation greater than 50% of peak z-scores for the five attentional conditions where subjects were instructed to focus their attention on auditory, somatosensory, visual, or cognitive (constructing a title for the scene) features of the stimuli, or to relax.

Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.

Maximal connectivity clusters for the PCC region of the default mode network. Three (Upper) and six (Lower) cluster conditions are shown. In other regions of the network, each voxel's time series is correlated with the mean time series of each PCC cluster and colored to correspond to the cluster to which it showed highest correlation. The PCC region for which the original clustering was performed is identified by arrows. Slice positions are MNI: z = −7, 10, 25, 40, and 55.

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