Comparing frontal eye field and superior colliculus contributions to covert spatial attention

• Published in: Nature communications 2018-09, Vol.9 (1), p.3553-11, Article 3553
• Main Authors: Bollimunta, Anil, Bogadhi, Amarender R., Krauzlis, Richard J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 631/378; 631/378/2629; 631/378/2649; 631/378/2649/1310; 631/378/3920; Animals; Attention - drug effects; Attention - physiology; Attention task; Brain; Change detection; Deactivation; Electric Stimulation; Experiments; Eye; Eye movements; Frontal Lobe - drug effects; Frontal Lobe - physiology; GABA-A Receptor Agonists - pharmacology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Inactivation; Macaca mulatta; Monkeys; Morphology; Motion detection; Motion perception; multidisciplinary; Muscimol - pharmacology; Psychomotor Performance; Quantitative psychology; Receptive field; Saccades - drug effects; Saccades - physiology; Saccadic eye movements; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Space Perception - drug effects; Space Perception - physiology; Superior Colliculi - drug effects; Superior Colliculi - physiology; Superior colliculus; Test procedures; Visual perception; Visual signals; Visual tasks
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06042-2

The causal roles of the frontal eye fields (FEF) and superior colliculus (SC) in spatial selective attention have not been directly compared. Reversible inactivation is an established method for testing causality but comparing results between FEF and SC is complicated by differences in size and morphology of the two brain regions. Here we exploited the fact that inactivation of FEF and SC also changes the metrics of saccadic eye movements, providing an independent benchmark for the strength of the causal manipulation. Using monkeys trained to covertly perform a visual motion-change detection task, we found that inactivation of either FEF or SC could cause deficits in attention task performance. However, SC-induced attention deficits were found with saccade changes half the size needed to get FEF-induced attention deficits. Thus, performance in visual attention tasks is vulnerable to loss of signals from either structure, but suppression of SC activity has a more devastating effect. Superior colliculus (SC) and frontal eye fields (FEF) contain visuo-motor maps but their contributions to selective attention are not fully understood. Here, the authors perform reversible inactivations of the SC or FEF and report that loss of SC activity has a more devastating effect on attention.