TY  - JOUR
AU  - Zeng, Hang
AU  - Weidner, Ralph
AU  - Fink, Gereon R.
AU  - Chen, Qi
TI  - Neural correlates underlying the attentional spotlight in human parietal cortex independent of task difficulty
JO  - Human brain mapping
VL  - 38
IS  - 10
SN  - 1065-9471
CY  - New York, NY
PB  - Wiley-Liss
M1  - FZJ-2017-04977
SP  - 4996–5018
PY  - 2017
AB  - Changes in the size of the attentional focus and task difficulty often co-vary. Nevertheless, the neural processes underlying the attentional spotlight process and task difficulty are likely to differ from each other. To differentiate between the two, we parametrically varied the size of the attentional focus in a novel behavioral paradigm while keeping visual processing difficulty either constant or not. A behavioral control experiment proved that the present behavioral paradigm could indeed effectively manipulate the size of the attentional focus per se, rather than affecting purely perceptual processes or surface processing. Imaging results showed that neural activity in a dorsal frontoparietal network, including right superior parietal cortex (SPL), was positively correlated with the size of the attentional spotlight, irrespective of whether task difficulty was constant or varied across different sizes of attentional focus. In contrast, neural activity in the ventral frontoparietal network, including the right inferior parietal cortex (IPL), was positively correlated with increasing task difficulty. Data suggest that sub-regions in parietal cortex are differentially involved in the attentional spotlight process and task difficulty: while SPL was involved in the attentional spotlight process independent of task difficulty, IPL was involved in the effect of task difficulty independent of the attentional spotlight process
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:28653792
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000417002000014
DO  - DOI:10.1002/hbm.23709
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/835109
ER  -