Studying the role of human parietal cortex in visuospatial attention with concurrent TMS-fMRI
- 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. Key words: concurrent TMS--fMRI, posterior parietal cortex, statedependence, visuospatial attention
Author: | Felix Blankenburg, Christian C. Ruff, Sven Bestmann, Otto Bjoertomt, Oliver Josephs, Ralf DeichmannORCiD, Jon Driver |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-85121 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhq015 |
Parent Title (German): | Cerebral Cortex |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2010/11/12 |
Year of first Publication: | 2010 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2010/11/12 |
Tag: | concurrent TMS--fMRI; posterior parietal cortex; statedependence; visuospatial attention |
Volume: | 20 |
First Page: | 2702 |
Last Page: | 2711 |
Note: | © The Author(s) 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Source: | Cerebral Cortex, 20, S. 2702-2711 ; doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhq015 |
HeBIS-PPN: | 230075282 |
Institutes: | Medizin / Medizin |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Sammlung Biologie / Sondersammelgebiets-Volltexte | |
Licence (German): | Deutsches Urheberrecht |