Selective attention and the visual representation of object attributes in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex of the rhesus monkey

The effects of attending to one or another of an object's attributes on neuronal representations of that object were investigated using extracellular recordings. A female rhesus monkey performed a delayed match to object attribute (DMSA) task, in which she alternately matched object orientations and object colors. In half of the task conditions, only one attribute matched the sample, forcing the animal to apply the current matching rule and ignore the irrelevant-attribute. Multiple simultaneous single-unit extracellular recordings were made in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) while the monkey performed the task. Neuronal selectivity for matching rule, object attributes, attribute relevance, response choice, and congruency were assessed using multi-factor ANOVAs. Attribute-selective responses were common in both cortical areas during the sample and delay periods, but were not significantly modulated by attribute relevance. There were few interactions between color-selective and orientation-selective responses according to the ANOVAs, suggesting that these attributes were represented independently.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Kiddoo, Cynthia E

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Earl K. Miller.

• Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33674
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33674

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33674