Computation and Neural Systems Seminar

A principal function of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is selective attention, and this function involves the top-down modulation of sensory signals during goal-directed behavior. I will talk about recent work demonstrating the involvement of the frontal eye field (FEF), an oculomotor area within PFC, in visual spatial attention in which relevant visual information is selected at the expense of potentially distracting information. This work not only implicates the FEF in the control of voluntarily directed spatial attention but elucidates its neural circuitry.