Top-down control of exogenous attentional selection is mediated by beta coherence in prefrontal cortex

Abstract

Salience-driven exogenous and goal-driven endogenous attentional selection are two distinct forms of attention that guide selection of task-irrelevant and task-relevant targets in primates. Top-down attentional control mechanisms enable selection of the task-relevant target by limiting the influence of sensory information. Although the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is known to mediate top-down control, the neuronal mechanisms of top-down control of attentional selection are poorly understood. Here, we trained two rhesus monkeys on a two-target, free-choice luminance-reward selection task. We demonstrate that visual-movement (VM) neurons and nonvisual neurons or movement neurons encode exogenous and endogenous selection. We then show that coherent beta activity selectively modulates mechanisms of exogenous selection specifically during conflict and consequently may support top-down control. These results reveal the VM-neuron-specific network mechanisms of attentional selection and suggest a functional role for beta-frequency coherent neural dynamics in the modulation of sensory communication channels for the top-down control of attentional selection.