High-Frequency, Long-Range Coupling Between Prefrontal and Visual Cortex During Attention

Electrical recordings in humans and monkeys show attentional enhancement of evoked responses and gamma synchrony in ventral stream cortical areas. Does this synchrony result from intrinsic activity in visual cortex or from inputs from other structures? Using paired recordings in the frontal eye fiel...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gregoriou, Georgia G., Zhou, Huihui, Desimone, Robert, Gotts, Stephen J.
Other Authors: McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86394
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3466-8706
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5938-4227
Description
Summary:Electrical recordings in humans and monkeys show attentional enhancement of evoked responses and gamma synchrony in ventral stream cortical areas. Does this synchrony result from intrinsic activity in visual cortex or from inputs from other structures? Using paired recordings in the frontal eye field (FEF) and area V4, we found that attention to a stimulus in their joint receptive field leads to enhanced oscillatory coupling between the two areas, particularly at gamma frequencies. This coupling appeared to be initiated by FEF and was time-shifted by about 8 to 13 milliseconds across a range of frequencies. Considering the expected conduction and synaptic delays between the areas, this time-shifted coupling at gamma frequencies may optimize the postsynaptic impact of spikes from one area upon the other, improving cross-area communication with attention.