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Hemisphere-specific Parietal Contributions to the Interplay between Working Memory and Attention.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Kiyonaga, A; Powers, JP; Chiu, Y-C; Egner, T
Published in: Journal of cognitive neuroscience
July 2021

To achieve our moment-to-moment goals, we must often keep information temporarily in mind. Yet, this working memory (WM) may compete with demands for our attention in the environment. Attentional and WM functions are thought to operate by similar underlying principles, and they often engage overlapping fronto-parietal brain regions. In a recent fMRI study, bilateral parietal cortex BOLD activity displayed an interaction between WM and visual attention dual-task demands. However, prior studies also suggest that left and right parietal cortices make unique contributions to WM and attentional functions. Moreover, behavioral performance often shows no interaction between concurrent WM and attentional demands. Thus, the scope of reciprocity between WM and attentional functions, as well as the specific contribution that parietal cortex makes to these functions, remain unresolved. Here, we took a causal approach, targeting brain regions that are implicated in shared processing between WM and visual attention, to better characterize how those regions contribute to behavior. We first examined whether behavioral indices of WM and visual search differentially correlate with left and right parietal dual-task BOLD responses. Then, we delivered TMS over fMRI-guided left and right parietal sites during dual-task WM-visual search performance. Only right-parietal TMS influenced visual search behavior, but the stimulation either helped or harmed search depending on the current WM load. Therefore, whereas the left and right parietal contributions were distinct here, attentional and WM functions were codependent. Right parietal cortex seems to hold a privileged role in visual search behavior, consistent with prior findings, but the current results reveal that behavior may be sensitive to the interaction between visual search and WM load only when normal parietal activity is perturbed. The parietal response to heightened WM and attentional demands may therefore serve to protect against dual-task interference.

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Published In

Journal of cognitive neuroscience

DOI

EISSN

1530-8898

ISSN

0898-929X

Publication Date

July 2021

Volume

33

Issue

8

Start / End Page

1428 / 1441

Related Subject Headings

  • Parietal Lobe
  • Memory, Short-Term
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Humans
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Brain Mapping
  • Brain
  • 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
  • 5202 Biological psychology
  • 3209 Neurosciences
 

Citation

APA
Chicago
ICMJE
MLA
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Kiyonaga, A., Powers, J. P., Chiu, Y.-C., & Egner, T. (2021). Hemisphere-specific Parietal Contributions to the Interplay between Working Memory and Attention. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33(8), 1428–1441. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01740
Kiyonaga, Anastasia, John P. Powers, Yu-Chin Chiu, and Tobias Egner. “Hemisphere-specific Parietal Contributions to the Interplay between Working Memory and Attention.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 33, no. 8 (July 2021): 1428–41. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01740.
Kiyonaga A, Powers JP, Chiu Y-C, Egner T. Hemisphere-specific Parietal Contributions to the Interplay between Working Memory and Attention. Journal of cognitive neuroscience. 2021 Jul;33(8):1428–41.
Kiyonaga, Anastasia, et al. “Hemisphere-specific Parietal Contributions to the Interplay between Working Memory and Attention.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 33, no. 8, July 2021, pp. 1428–41. Epmc, doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01740.
Kiyonaga A, Powers JP, Chiu Y-C, Egner T. Hemisphere-specific Parietal Contributions to the Interplay between Working Memory and Attention. Journal of cognitive neuroscience. 2021 Jul;33(8):1428–1441.
Journal cover image

Published In

Journal of cognitive neuroscience

DOI

EISSN

1530-8898

ISSN

0898-929X

Publication Date

July 2021

Volume

33

Issue

8

Start / End Page

1428 / 1441

Related Subject Headings

  • Parietal Lobe
  • Memory, Short-Term
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Humans
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Brain Mapping
  • Brain
  • 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
  • 5202 Biological psychology
  • 3209 Neurosciences