Orienting auditory spatial attention engages frontal eye fields and medial occipital cortex in congenitally blind humans
Orienting auditory spatial attention engages frontal eye fields and medial occipital cortex in congenitally blind humans
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DOI：
10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.02.015
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发表时间：
2007-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Stevens, Alexander A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Garg, Arun;Schwartz, Daniel;Stevens, Alexander A.
当先天失明(CB)个体将注意力定向到空间位置时，与视觉相关的皮质区域会发生什么？以前对有视力的人的神经成像发现，在空间注意力的显性(有眼动)和隐蔽(无眼动)转移期间，包括额眼视野(FEF)在内的额顶区网络中存在重叠激活。由于自主眼动计划似乎与CB无关，如果他们在有视力的个体中的注意作用仅仅是由于眼动计划，那么他们的FEF神经元应该被招募来替代功能。最近盲人的神经成像也报告了在不同的非视觉任务中，通常与视觉处理相关的枕内侧区域的激活，但他们对注意力转移的反应仍然很差。在这里，我们使用事件相关的fMRI来探索CB个体的FEF和枕内侧区，以及闭着眼睛的视力对照组(SC)执行隐蔽的注意定向任务，内源性语言线索和空间化的听觉目标。我们发现，在所有CB受试者中，刺激锁定的FEF激活与SC相似，而且比SC更强，这表明FEF在内源性定向隐蔽空间注意方面发挥了作用，即使在自愿眼动不相关的个体中也是如此。我们还发现CB受试者双侧枕叶内侧皮质有较强的激活，而SC受试者则没有。在内源性语言提示下，反应低于基线，但在听觉目标后，反应增加，这表明在注意线索定向过程中，CB的枕内侧区域并不直接参与，但可能被招募来处理空间化的听觉目标。(C)2007爱思唯尔有限公司。保留所有权利。
What happens in vision-related cortical areas when congenitally blind (CB) individuals orient attention to spatial locations? Previous neuroimaging of sighted individuals has found overlapping activation in a network of frontoparietal areas including frontal eye fields (FEF), during both overt (with eye movement) and covert (without eye movement) shifts of spatial attention. Since voluntary eye movement planning seems irrelevant in CB, their FEF neurons should be recruited for alternative functions if their attentional role in sighted individuals is only due to eye movement planning.Recent neuroimaging of the blind has also reported activation in medial occipital areas, normally associated with visual processing, during a diverse set of non-visual tasks, but their response to attentional shifts remains poorly understood.Here, we used event-related fMRI to explore FEF and medial occipital areas in CB individuals and sighted controls with eyes closed (SC) performing a covert attention orienting task with endogenous verbal cues and spatialized auditory targets. We found robust stimulus-locked FEF activation of all CB subjects, similar to and stronger than in SC, suggesting that FEF plays a role in endogenous orienting of covert spatial attention even in individuals in whom voluntary eye movements are irrelevant. We also found robust activation in bilateral medial occipital cortex in CB but not in SC subjects. The response decreased below baseline following endogenous verbal cues but increased following auditory targets, suggesting that the medial occipital area in CB does not directly engage during cued orienting of attention but may be recruited for processing of spatialized auditory targets. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.