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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Studying the role of human parietal cortex in visuospatial attention with concurrent TMS-fMRI
Organization Unit
Authors
  • F Blankenburg
  • Christian Ruff
  • S Bestmann
  • O Bjoertomt
  • O Josephs
  • R Deichmann
  • J Driver
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Cerebral Cortex
Publisher Oxford University Press
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 1047-3211
Volume 20
Number 11
Page Range 2702 - 2711
Date 2010
Abstract Text Combining transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows study of how local brain stimulation may causally affect activity in remote brain regions. Here, we applied bursts of high- or low-intensity TMS over right posterior parietal cortex, during a task requiring sustained covert visuospatial attention to either the left or right hemifield, or in a neutral control condition, while recording blood oxygenation-level-dependent signal with a posterior MR surface coil. As expected, the active attention conditions activated components of the well-described "attention network," as compared with the neutral baseline. Also as expected, when comparing left minus right attention, or vice versa, contralateral occipital visual cortex was activated. The critical new finding was that the impact of high- minus low-intensity parietal TMS upon these visual regions depended on the currently attended side. High- minus low-intensity parietal TMS increased the difference between contralateral versus ipsilateral attention in right extrastriate visual cortex. A related albeit less pronounced pattern was found for left extrastriate visual cortex. Our results confirm that right human parietal cortex can exert attention-dependent influences on occipital visual cortex and provide a proof of concept for the use of concurrent TMS-fMRI in studying how remote influences can vary in a purely top-down manner with attentional demands.
Free access at PubMed ID
Digital Object Identifier 10.1093/cercor/bhq015
PubMed ID 20176690
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