Journal
CEREBRAL CORTEX
Volume 25, Issue 6, Pages 1527-1534Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bht345
Keywords
DCM; fMRI; human; prefrontal cortex; striatum
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Funding
- Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
- Human Frontiers Science Program research grant
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The prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia interact to selectively gate a desired action. Recent studies have shown that this selective gating mechanism of the basal ganglia extends to the domain of attention. Here, we investigate the nature of this action-like gating mechanism for attention using a spatial attention-switching paradigm in combination with functional neuroimaging and dynamic causal modeling. We show that the basal ganglia guide attention by focally releasing inhibition of task-relevant representations, while simultaneously inhibiting task-irrelevant representations by selectively modulating prefrontal top-down connections. These results strengthen and specify the role of the basal ganglia in attention. Moreover, our findings have implications for psychological theorizing by suggesting that inhibition of unattended sensory regions is not only a consequence of mutual suppression, but is an active process, subserved by the basal ganglia.
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