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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Imaging Methods
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1472114

The frontal and posterior cortical areas involved in the nonspatial visual allocation of attention in the human brain: A functional neuroimaging study

Provisionally accepted
Kristina Drudik Kristina Drudik 1,2*Veronika Zlatkina Veronika Zlatkina 2Michael Petrides Michael Petrides 1,2
  • 1 McGill University, Montreal, Canada
  • 2 Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Previous functional neuroimaging studies had demonstrated the involvement of cytoarchitectonic area 8Av of the prefrontal cortex in the cognitive allocation of attention to spatial stimuli. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examined brain activity related to the allocation of attention to nonspatial visual stimuli, i.e. stimuli that are defined by their perceptual features and are independent of their location. The study established a) the involvement of area 8Av in the allocation of attention to nonspatial stimuli in the environment and b) the areas co-activated with area 8Av across the entire cortex so that the complete functional cortical network could be defined. Finally, based on individual subject analysis, the functional activity in area 8Av was related to specific sulci in the caudal middle frontal gyrus. The novel information provided by the current fMRI study significantly advances our understanding of the role of area 8Av in the selective allocation of attention to stimuli in the environment.

    Keywords: Allocation of attention1, nonspatial2, fMRI3, dorsal attention network4, cytoarchitectonic area 8A5, if/then conditional rules6

    Received: 28 Jul 2024; Accepted: 20 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Drudik, Zlatkina and Petrides. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kristina Drudik, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

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