Covariation of activity in visual and prefrontal cortex associated with subjective visual perception.

Visual areas of the occipitotemporal pathway are thought to be essential for the conscious perception of objects, but the contribution of other cortical regions and the neural mechanisms leading to the awareness of a visual stimulus remain unclear. By using functional MRI in humans exposed to bistable viewing conditions, subjective visual perception was related to covariation of activity in multiple extrastriate ventral, parietal, and prefrontal cortical areas. The coordination of activity among these regions was not linked to external sensory or motor events; rather, it reflected internal changes in perception and varied in strength with the frequency of perceptual events, suggesting that functional interactions between visual and prefrontal cortex may contribute to conscious vision. Because similar cortical systems have been implicated in short-term memory and motor planning, the results also imply that related neural processes may underlie visual awareness and the organization of voluntary behavior contingent on sensory cues.

[1]  D. Spalding.  The Principles of Psychology , 1873, Nature.

[2]  G. E. Alexander,et al.  Neuron Activity Related to Short-Term Memory , 1971, Science.

[3]  A. Luria.  The Working Brain , 1973 .

[4]  Mortimer Mishkin,et al.  Blindness in monkeys following non-visual cortical lesions , 1980, Brain Research.

[5]  H. Spinnler.  The prefrontal cortex, Anatomy, physiology, and neuropsychology of the frontal lobe, J.M. Fuster. Raven Press, New York (1980), IX-222 pages , 1981 .

[6]  J. Fuster,et al.  Functional interactions between inferotemporal and prefrontal cortex in a cognitive task , 1985, Brain Research.

[7]  J. Fuster,et al.  Effects of cooling parietal cortex on prefrontal units in delay tasks , 1989, Brain Research.

[8]  N. Logothetis,et al.  Neuronal correlates of subjective visual perception. , 1989, Science.

[9]  M. Torrens.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268 , 1990 .

[10]  M. Goodale,et al.  Separate visual pathways for perception and action , 1992, Trends in Neurosciences.

[11]  P. Goldman-Rakic,et al.  Dissociation of object and spatial processing domains in primate prefrontal cortex. , 1993, Science.

[12]  M. Corbetta,et al.  A PET study of visuospatial attention , 1993, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[13]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  Area V5 of the human brain: evidence from a combined study using positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. , 1993, Cerebral cortex.

[14]  R. Passingham.  The frontal lobes and voluntary action , 1993 .

[15]  J. Fuster.  Memory in the cerebral cortex , 1994 .

[16]  R. Desimone,et al.  Parallel neuronal mechanisms for short-term memory. , 1994, Science.

[17]  P. Goldman-Rakic,et al.  Coactivation of prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal cortex in working memory tasks revealed by 2DG functional mapping in the rhesus monkey , 1994, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[18]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Statistical parametric maps in functional imaging: A general linear approach , 1994 .

[19]  D. V. Essen,et al.  Neural mechanisms of form and motion processing in the primate visual system , 1994, Neuron.

[20]  R. Desimone,et al.  Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. , 1995, Annual review of neuroscience.

[21]  C. Koch,et al.  Are we aware of neural activity in primary visual cortex? , 1995, Nature.

[22]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Spatial registration and normalization of images , 1995 .

[23]  P. Goldman-Rakic.  Cellular basis of working memory , 1995, Neuron.

[24]  J H Maunsell,et al.  The Brain's Visual World: Representation of Visual Targets in Cerebral Cortex , 1995, Science.

[25]  David L. Sheinberg,et al.  Visual object recognition. , 1996, Annual review of neuroscience.

[26]  N. Logothetis,et al.  Activity changes in early visual cortex reflect monkeys' percepts during binocular rivalry , 1996, Nature.

[27]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Event‐related f MRI , 1997, Human brain mapping.

[28]  A. Dale,et al.  Functional Analysis of V3A and Related Areas in Human Visual Cortex , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[29]  J. Fuster.  The Prefrontal Cortex , 1997 .

[30]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Transient and sustained activity in a distributed neural system for human working memory , 1997, Nature.

[31]  A. Cowey,et al.  Cerebral achromatopsia: colour blindness despite wavelength processing , 1997, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[32]  David L. Sheinberg,et al.  The role of temporal cortical areas in perceptual organization. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[33]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[34]  B. J. McCurtain,et al.  Dorsal cortical regions subserving visually guided saccades in humans: an fMRI study. , 1998, Cerebral cortex.

[35]  J. Mattingley,et al.  Parietal neglect and visual awareness , 1998, Nature Neuroscience.

[36]  P. Goldman-Rakic,et al.  Matching patterns of activity in primate prefrontal area 8a and parietal area 7ip neurons during a spatial working memory task. , 1998, Journal of neurophysiology.

[37]  G. Rees,et al.  Neural correlates of perceptual rivalry in the human brain. , 1998, Science.

[38]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  An area specialized for spatial working memory in human frontal cortex. , 1998, Science.

[39]  D. Wilkin,et al.  Neuron , 2001, Brain Research.