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Attention Control Network

Main Text

• Working memory: Manipulation and processing of object, cognitive, or stimulus representations in brain, including rehearsal, analysis, and comparison of stimuli
• Hemispatial neglect: Deficits in salience detection and spatial attention of portion of egocentric space; usually associated with right hemisphere injury and impaired attention to stimuli on patient’s left side
• Attention control network: Union of dorsal, ventral, and salience attentional networks (a.k.a. task-positive network); distributed brain network involved in control of attention and working memory

• Attention, working memory, executive control, and novelty detection share overlapping distributed networks that are dedicated to processing and analysis of external stimuli
• Each node of network

Contains “map” of cognitive space, topographically connected to other nodes

Represents different types of cognitive information about external stimuli
• 3 attentional subnetworks are present: Dorsal attention, ventral attention, and salience

• Voluntary control of attentional focus and goal-directed behavior
• Intraparietal sulcus (IPS)

Contains a representation of cognitive space organized topographically by sensory modality and multiple egocentric reference frames of contralateral space

Activity in 1 part of IPS results in increased sensitivity of related areas of sensory cortex, resulting in “attending” to that region of space and modality of sensation

Likely competition for attention between different subregions of IPS and between hemispheric homologues; regions of greatest activity control content of attention
• Frontal eye fields (FEFs) and supplementary eye fields (SEFs)

Direct eye movements toward stimuli of interest

Also include SEF regions
• Middle temporal (MT)

Processes dynamic changes in external stimuli such as motion perception
• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Active during working memory tasks, manipulation of multiple object representations, cognitive operations on external or abstract stimuli

• Control of reorienting to relevant stimuli
• Supramarginal and angular gyri

Lateral extension of IPS in dorsal attention network
• Inferior frontal gyrus

Lateral correlate of FEFs/SEFs in dorsal attention network
• Ventral attention network is right dominant, analogous to Broca and Wernicke areas in left hemisphere

• Detection of novel or salient stimuli
• Anterior insula (frontoinsular cortex) and anterior cingulate are active when a stimulus is novel, salient, or rewarding; associated with mesolimbic reward pathways from ventral tegmentum to nucleus accumbens and cortex

Salience network is activated by salient stimuli regardless of modality of stimulus
• Anterior insula

Superior anterior insula associated with novelty of external stimuli

Inferior anterior insula associated with novelty of emotive stimuli, more connections to limbic regions
• Anterior cingulate

Dorsal anterior cingulate more associated with novel external stimuli

Ventral (pregenual) anterior cingulate more associated with emotive salience

• Cerebellar attentional regions

Bilateral superior lateral and inferior lateral cerebellar hemispheres show greatest connectivity to cortical attention control network

Attentional sequelae of isolated injuries in attentional regions of cerebellum are not well characterized
• Basal ganglia

Subcortical pathways of reward processing likely interact with cortical attentional networks through basal ganglia

Dopamine is a powerful regulator of attention and salience

Damage to basal ganglia leads to abulia (apathy without dysphoria)

May modulate motivational drive, reward, and arousal associated with attention

• Transmits core frontoparietal attentional network connections between FEFs and IPS

• Right-dominant connection between inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal regions of ventral attention network
• Attentional information in right hemisphere is analogous to language pathway in left hemisphere