Electrical Neuroimaging of Voluntary Audiospatial Attention: Evidence for a Supramodal Attention Control Network

Abstract

Previous attempts to investigate the supramodal nature of attentional control have focused primarily on identifying neuroanatomical overlap in the frontoparietal systems activated during voluntary shifts of spatial attention in different sensory modalities. However, the activation of the same neural structures is insufficient evidence for a supramodal system, as the same brain regions could interact with one another in very different ways during shifts of attention in different modalities. Thus, to explore the similarity of the functional networks, it is necessary to identify the neural structures involved and to examine the timing and sequence of activities within the network. To this end, we used an electrical neuroimaging technique to localize the neural sources of electroencephalographic signals recorded from human subjects during audiospatial shifts of attention and to examine the timing and sequence of activities within several regions of interest. We then compared the results to an analogous study of visuospatial attention shifts. Similar frontal and parietal regions were activated during visual and auditory shifts of attention, and the timing of activities within these regions was nearly identical. Following this modality-independent sequence of attention-control activity, activity in the relevant sensory cortex was enhanced in anticipation of the response-relevant target. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that a single supramodal network of frontal and parietal regions mediates voluntary shifts of spatial attention and controls the flow of sensory information in modality-specific sensory pathways.