Journal
CEREBRAL CORTEX
Volume 17, Issue 6, Pages 1486-1492Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhl060
Keywords
primary consciousness; repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS); ventral posterior parietal cortex; visuospatial attention
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In this paper, we used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in 18 normal subjects to investigate whether the ventral posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays a causal role on visuospatial attention and primary consciousness and whether these 2 functions are linearly correlated with each other. Two distinct experimental conditions involved a similar visual stimuli recognition paradigm. In Consciousness experiment, number of consciously perceived visual stimuli was lower by about 10% after rTMS (300 ms, 20 Hz, motor threshold intensity) on left or right PPC than after sham (pseudo) rTMS. In Attentional Posner's experiment, these stimuli were always consciously perceived. Compared with sham condition, parietal rTMS slowed of about 25 ms reaction time to go stimuli, thus disclosing effects on endogenous covert spatial attention. No linear correlation was observed between the rTMS-induced impairment on attention and conscious perception. Results suggest that PPC plays a slight but significant causal role in both visuospatial attention and primary consciousness. Furthermore, these high-level cognitive functions, as modulated by parietal rTMS, do not seem to share either linear or simple relationships.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available