ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2021
Top-Down Attentional Modulation in Human Frontal Cortex: Differential Engagement during External and Internal Attention.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mental Imagery Enhances Pain Reduction and Visual Processing in Knee Osteoarthritis Patients: A Comparative Study.Pain research & management · 2025Trial
- Differential roles of frontoparietal regions in working memory and decision-making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Capturing naturalistic thoughts using a precision experience sampling idiographic approach.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Characterizing alterations in attention networks under high mental workload.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Episodic memory involves transient and sparse connectivity aligned to both internal and external events.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Predicting attentional focus: Heartbeat-evoked responses and brain dynamics during interoceptive and exteroceptive processing.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Predictable and unpredictable deviance detection in the human hippocampus and amygdala.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Ramping dynamics and theta oscillations reflect dissociable signatures during rule-guided human behavior.Nature communications · 2024Article
- A rapid theta network mechanism for flexible information encoding.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Intrinsic Neural Timescales in the Temporal Lobe Support an Auditory Processing Hierarchy.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Dissociable oscillatory theta signatures of memory formation in the developing brain.Current biology : CB · 2022Article
- Mind-wandering: mechanistic insights from lesion, tDCS, and iEEG.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2022Review
- Higher Peripheral Inflammation Is Associated With Lower Orbitofrontal Gamma Power in Chronic Tinnitus.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Article
- Automatic Sensory Predictions: A Review of Predictive Mechanisms in the Brain and Their Link to Conscious Processing.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Decades of electrophysiological research on top-down control converge on the role of the lateral frontal cortex in facilitating attention to behaviorally relevant external inputs. However, the involvement of frontal cortex in the top-down control of attention directed to the external versus internal environment remains poorly understood. To address this, we recorded intracranial electrocorticography while subjects directed their attention externally to tones and responded to infrequent target tones, or internally to their own thoughts while ignoring the tones. Our analyses focused on frontal and temporal cortices. We first computed the target effect, as indexed by the difference in high frequency activity (70-150 Hz) between target and standard tones. Importantly, we then compared the target effect between external and internal attention, reflecting a top-down attentional effect elicited by task demands, in each region of interest. Both frontal and temporal cortices showed target effects during external and internal attention, suggesting this effect is present irrespective of attention states. However, only the frontal cortex showed an enhanced target effect during external relative to internal attention. These findings provide electrophysiological evidence for top-down attentional modulation in the lateral frontal cortex, revealing preferential engagement with external attention.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.