Propagation of Information Along the Cortical Hierarchy as a Function of Attention while Reading and Listening to Stories

Mor Regev, Erez Simony, Katherine Lee, Kean Ming Tan, Janice Chen, Uri Hasson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

38 Scopus citations

Abstract

How does attention route information from sensory to high-order areas as a function of task, within the relatively fixed topology of the brain? In this study, participants were simultaneously presented with 2 unrelated stories-one spoken and one written-and asked to attend one while ignoring the other. We used fMRI and a novel intersubject correlation analysis to track the spread of information along the processing hierarchy as a function of task. Processing the unattended spoken (written) information was confined to auditory (visual) cortices. In contrast, attending to the spoken (written) story enhanced the stimulus-selective responses in sensory regions and allowed it to spread into higher-order areas. Surprisingly, we found that the story-specific spoken (written) responses for the attended story also reached secondary visual (auditory) regions of the unattended sensory modality. These results demonstrate how attention enhances the processing of attended input and allows it to propagate across brain areas.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)4017-4034
Number of pages18
JournalCerebral Cortex
Volume29
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 13 2019

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Keywords

  • attention
  • fMRI
  • information propagation
  • intersubject functional correlation
  • language

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Propagation of Information Along the Cortical Hierarchy as a Function of Attention while Reading and Listening to Stories'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this