ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2021
A Stable Population Code for Attention in Prefrontal Cortex Leads a Dynamic Attention Code in Visual Cortex.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Attentional selection drives information convergence within macaque lateral prefrontal cortex.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Genital-prioritized attentional bias in lifelong premature ejaculation: behavioral evidence from eye-tracking and machine learning.International journal of impotence research · 2026Article
- Interactions across hemispheres in prefrontal cortex reflect global cognitive processing.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Task learning increases information redundancy of neural responses in macaque visual cortex.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Facial gestures are enacted through a cortical hierarchy of dynamic and stable codes.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Robustness of Working Memory to Prefrontal Cortex Microstimulation.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Duet model unifies diverse neuroscience experimental findings on predictive coding.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Interactions across hemispheres in prefrontal cortex reflect global cognitive processing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neural Dynamics in Extrastriate Cortex Underlying False Alarms.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Brain-guided convolutional neural networks reveal task-specific representations in scene processing.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Decoding Visual Spatial Attention Control.eNeuro · 2025Article
- Prefrontal working memory signal controls phase-coded information within extrastriate cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Robustness of working memory to prefrontal cortex microstimulation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- EEG β oscillations in aberrant data perception under cognitive load modulation.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- A computational mechanism of cue-stimulus integration for pain in the brain.Science advances · 2024Article
- Automated customization of large-scale spiking network models to neuronal population activity.Nature computational science · 2024Article
- Article
- Acute hypoxia alters visuospatial attention orienting: an electrical neuroimaging study.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Dynamic attention signalling in V4: Relation to fast-spiking/non-fast-spiking cell class and population coupling.The European journal of neuroscience · 2023Article
- Advances in AAV technology for delivering genetically encoded cargo to the nonhuman primate nervous system.Current research in neurobiology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Attention often requires maintaining a stable mental state over time while simultaneously improving perceptual sensitivity. These requirements place conflicting demands on neural populations, as sensitivity implies a robust response to perturbation by incoming stimuli, which is antithetical to stability. Functional specialization of cortical areas provides one potential mechanism to resolve this conflict. We reasoned that attention signals in executive control areas might be highly stable over time, reflecting maintenance of the cognitive state, thereby freeing up sensory areas to be more sensitive to sensory input (i.e., unstable), which would be reflected by more dynamic attention signals in those areas. To test these predictions, we simultaneously recorded neural populations in prefrontal cortex (PFC) and visual cortical area V4 in rhesus macaque monkeys performing an endogenous spatial selective attention task. Using a decoding approach, we found that the neural code for attention states in PFC was substantially more stable over time compared with the attention code in V4 on a moment-by-moment basis, in line with our guiding thesis. Moreover, attention signals in PFC predicted the future attention state of V4 better than vice versa, consistent with a top-down role for PFC in attention. These results suggest a functional specialization of attention mechanisms across cortical areas with a division of labor. PFC signals the cognitive state and maintains this state stably over time, whereas V4 responds to sensory input in a manner dynamically modulated by that cognitive state.
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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.