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The Journal of Neuroscience, June 25, 2008, 28(26):6549-6556; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0275-08.2008

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Anticipatory Suppression of Nonattended Locations in Visual Cortex Marks Target Location and Predicts Perception

Chad M. Sylvester,¹ Anthony I. Jack,⁴ Maurizio Corbetta,^1,2,3 and Gordon L. Shulman²

Departments of ¹Radiology, ²Neurology, and ³Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, and ⁴Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44016

Correspondence should be addressed to Chad M. Sylvester, Washington University School of Medicine, 4525 Scott Avenue, Department of Radiology Campus Box 8225, St. Louis, MO 63110. Email: chad{at}npg.wustl.edu

Spatial attention is associated with modulations in prestimulus, anticipatory blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) activity across the brain. It is unclear, however, if these anticipatory modulations depend on the computational demands of the upcoming task. Here, we show that anticipation of low-contrast stimuli, relative to high-contrast stimuli, is associated with increased prestimulus BOLD activity in the frontal eye field (FEF) and the posterior inferior frontal sulcus (IFS) but not in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). In visual cortex, anticipation of low-contrast stimuli is associated with increased suppression of activity corresponding to unattended (but not attended) locations, and this suppression predicts whether subjects will accurately perceive low-contrast stimuli. These results suggest that when a stimulus will be difficult to distinguish from the background, top-down signals from FEF and IFS can facilitate perception by marking its location through the suppression of unattended locations in visual cortex.

Key words: attention; contrast; fMRI; suppression; topography; visual

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Received Jan. 21, 2008; revised April 21, 2008; accepted May 18, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to Chad M. Sylvester, Washington University School of Medicine, 4525 Scott Avenue, Department of Radiology Campus Box 8225, St. Louis, MO 63110. Email: chad{at}npg.wustl.edu

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