competing neural responses for auditory and visual decisions神经反应竞争听觉和视觉的决定.pdfVIP

Competing Neural Responses for Auditory and Visual Decisions 1,2,3 2,4 5,6 ¨ 1,2 Grit Hein *, Arjen Alink , Andreas Kleinschmidt , Notger G. Muller 1 Cognitive Neurology Unit, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2 Brain Imaging Center, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 3 Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, United States of America, 4 Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck ´ ´ ´ Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 5 Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (INSERM), Unite 562, Gif-sur- ` ´ Yvette, France, 6 Commissariat a l’energie atomique (CEA), Life Sciences Division (DSV), I2BM, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France Why is it hard to divide attention between dissimilar activities, such as reading and listening to a conversation? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study interference between simple auditory and visual decisions, independently of motor competition. Overlapping activity for auditory and visual tasks performed in isolation was found in lateral prefrontal regions, middle temporal cortex and parietal cortex. When the visual stimulus occurred during the processing of the tone, its activation in prefrontal and middle temporal cortex was suppressed. Additionally, reduced activity was seen in modality-specific visual cortex. These results paralleled impaired awareness of the visual event. Even without competing motor responses, a simple auditory decision interferes with visual processing on different neural levels, including prefrontal cortex, middle temporal cortex and