Original Research Article
Baseline shifts do not predict attentional modulation of target processing during feature-based visual attention
1 Center for Mind and Brain, University of California at Davis, USA
2 M.I.N.D. Institute, University of California at Davis, USA
3 Departments of Psychology and Neurology, University of California at Davis, USA
2 M.I.N.D. Institute, University of California at Davis, USA
3 Departments of Psychology and Neurology, University of California at Davis, USA
Cues that direct selective attention to a spatial location have been observed to increase baseline neural activity in visual areas that represent a to-be-attended stimulus location. Analogous attention-related baseline shifts have also been observed in response to attention-directing cues for non-spatial stimulus features. It has been proposed that baseline shifts with preparatory attention may serve as the mechanism by which attention modulates the responses to subsequent visual targets that match the attended location or feature. Using functional MRI, we localized color- and motion-sensitive visual areas in individual subjects and investigated the relationship between cue-induced baseline shifts and the subsequent attentional modulation of task-relevant target stimuli. Although attention-directing cues often led to increased background neural activity in feature specific visual areas, these increases were not correlated with either behavior in the task or subsequent attentional modulation of the visual targets. These findings cast doubt on the hypothesis that attention-related shifts in baseline neural activity result in selective sensory processing of visual targets during feature-based selective attention.
Keywords: selective attention, visual feature, visual cortex, fMRI, baseline shift, MT, V4, V8
Copyright: © 2008 Fannon, Saron and Mangun. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence: George R. Mangun, Center for Mind and Brain, University of California at Davis, 267 Cousteau Place, Davis, CA 95618, USA. e-mail: mangun@ucdavis.edu
Citation: Fannon SP, Saron CD and Mangun GR (2008) Baseline shifts do not predict attentional modulation of target processing during feature-based visual attention. Front. Hum. Neurosci. (2007) 1:7. doi:10.3389/neuro.09.007.2007
Received: 18 September 2007; paper pending published: 29 November 2007; accepted: 03 January 2008; published online: 28 March 2008.
Edited by:
Robert T. Knight, University of California Berkeley, USA
Reviewed by:
Marty G. Woldorff, Duke University, USA
Maurizio Corbetta, Washington University, USA
Maurizio Corbetta, Washington University, USA
*Correspondence: George R. Mangun, Center for Mind and Brain, University of California at Davis, 267 Cousteau Place, Davis, CA 95618, USA. e-mail: mangun@ucdavis.edu
