Neuronal responses in area 7a to multiple stimulus displays: II. Responsesare suppressed at the cued location

Citation
C. Constantinidis et Ma. Steinmetz, Neuronal responses in area 7a to multiple stimulus displays: II. Responsesare suppressed at the cued location, CEREB CORT, 11(7), 2001, pp. 592-597
Citations number
29
Language
INGLESE
art.tipo
Article
Categorie Soggetti
Neurosciences & Behavoir
Journal title
CEREBRAL CORTEX
ISSN journal
1047-3211 → ACNP
Volume
11
Issue
7
Year of publication
2001
Pages
592 - 597
Database
ISI
SICI code
1047-3211(200107)11:7<592:NRIA7T>2.0.ZU;2-3
Abstract
Everyday visual scenes contain a variety of stimuli that vary in their sign ificance. The companion paper demonstrates that neurons in the posterior pa rietal cortex (PPC) are capable of encoding the spatial locations of the sa lient stimulus in multiple stimulus scenes. The present experiment sought t o address how neuronal responses to stimuli appearing in the receptive fiel d ace modulated after attention has been drawn to one of multiple stimuli i n a visual scene. We recorded from area 7a of the PPC in monkeys trained to do a spatial version of a match-to-sample task. The results show that neur onal responses are greatly suppressed when stimuli appear at previously att ended locations. No reduction in responsiveness is observed for locations w here stimuli had previously appeared but did not draw attention. These resu lts support the hypothesis that area 7a has a role in redirecting attention to stimuli appearing at novel, unattended locations.