Top-down cortical interactions in visuospatial attention.

The voluntary allocation of visuospatial attention depends upon top-down influences from the frontal eye field (FEF) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS)-the core regions of the dorsal attention network (DAN)-to visual occipital cortex (VOC), and has been further associated with within-DAN influences, particularly from the FEF to IPS. However, the degree to which these influences manifest at rest and are then modulated during anticipatory visuospatial attention tasks remains poorly understood. Here, we measured both undirected and directed functional connectivity (UFC, DFC) between the FEF, IPS, and VOC at rest and during an anticipatory visuospatial attention task, using a slow event-related design. Whereas the comparison between rest and task indicated FC modulations that persisted throughout the task duration, the large number of task trials we collected further enabled us to measure shorter timescale modulations of FC across the trial. Relative to rest, task engagement induced enhancement of both top-down influences from the DAN to VOC, as well as bidirectional influences between the FEF and IPS. These results suggest that task performance induces enhanced interaction within the DAN and a greater top-down influence on VOC. While resting FC generally showed right hemisphere dominance, task-related enhancement favored the left hemisphere, effectively balancing a resting hemispheric asymmetry, particularly within the DAN. On a shorter (within-trial) timescale, VOC-to-DAN and bidirectional FEF-IPS influences were transiently elevated during the anticipatory period of the trial, evincing phasic modulations related to changing attentional demands. In contrast to these task-specific effects, resting and task-related influence patterns were highly correlated, suggesting a predisposing role for resting organization, which requires minimal tonic and phasic modulations for control of visuospatial attention.

Neurocognitive networks: findings, models, and theory.

Through its early history, cognitive neuroscience largely followed a modular paradigm wherein high-level cognitive functions were mapped onto locally segregated brain regions. However, recent evidence drives a continuing shift away from modular theories of cognitive brain function, and toward theories which hold that cognition arises from the integrated activity of large-scale, distributed networks of brain regions. A growing consensus favors the fundamental concept of this new paradigm: the large-scale cognitive brain network, or neurocognitive network. This consensus was the motivation for Neurocognitive Networks 2010 (NCN 2010), a conference sponsored by the Cognitive Neuroscience Program of the National Science Foundation, organized by Drs. Steven Bressler and Craig Richter of Florida Atlantic University (FAU), and held at FAU in Boca Raton, FL on January 29-30, 2010. NCN 2010 gathered together some of today's leading investigators of neurocognitive networks. This paper serves to review their presentations as they relate to the paradigm of neurocognitive networks, as well as to compile the emergent themes, questions, and possible future research directions that arose from the conference.