Auditory Attention Activates Peripheral Visual Cortex

摘要: Background Recent neuroimaging studies have revealed that putatively unimodal regions of visual cortex can be activated during auditory tasks in sighted as well blind subjects. However, the task determinants and functional significance occipital activations (AOAs) remains unclear. Methodology/Principal Findings We examined AOAs an intermodal selective attention to distinguish whether they were stimulus-bound or recruited by higher-level cognitive operations associated with attention. Cortical surface mapping showed localized retinotopic subserving far peripheral field. depended strictly on sustained engagement enhanced more difficult listening conditions. In contrast, unattended sounds produced no regardless their intensity, spatial location, frequency. Conclusions/Significance Auditory attention, but not passive exposure sounds, routinely when subjects attended sound sources outside Functional connections between field appear underlie generation AOAs, which may reflect priming process soon-to-appear objects unseen sources.