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Science 29 May 2009:
Vol. 324. no. 5931, pp. 1207 - 1210
DOI: 10.1126/science.1171402
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Reports

High-Frequency, Long-Range Coupling Between Prefrontal and Visual Cortex During Attention

Georgia G. Gregoriou,1,* Stephen J. Gotts,2,* Huihui Zhou,1 Robert Desimone1,{dagger}

Electrical recordings in humans and monkeys show attentional enhancement of evoked responses and gamma synchrony in ventral stream cortical areas. Does this synchrony result from intrinsic activity in visual cortex or from inputs from other structures? Using paired recordings in the frontal eye field (FEF) and area V4, we found that attention to a stimulus in their joint receptive field leads to enhanced oscillatory coupling between the two areas, particularly at gamma frequencies. This coupling appeared to be initiated by FEF and was time-shifted by about 8 to 13 milliseconds across a range of frequencies. Considering the expected conduction and synaptic delays between the areas, this time-shifted coupling at gamma frequencies may optimize the postsynaptic impact of spikes from one area upon the other, improving cross-area communication with attention.

1 McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
2 Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: desimone{at}mit.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
On the Origin of Event-Related Potentials Indexing Covert Attentional Selection During Visual Search.
J. Y. Cohen, R. P. Heitz, J. D. Schall, and G. F. Woodman (2009)
J Neurophysiol 102, 2375-2386
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