Superior Colliculus and Visual Spatial Attention

By Richard J. Krauzlis, Lee P. Lovejoy, A. Zénon. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 2013

612 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The superior colliculus (SC) has long been known to be part of the network of brain areas involved in spatial attention, but recent findings have dramatically refined our understanding of its functional role. The SC both implements the motor consequences of attention and plays a crucial role in the process of target selection that precedes movement. Moreover, even in the absence of overt orienting movements, SC activity is related to shifts of covert attention and is necessary for the normal control of spatial attention during perceptual judgments. The neuronal circuits that link the SC to spatial attention may include attention-related areas of the cerebral cortex, but recent results show that the SC's contribution involves mechanisms that operate independently of the established signatures of attention in visual cortex. These findings raise new issues and suggest novel possibilities for understanding the brain mechanisms that enable spatial attention.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/00c78b50fbe972b22703ef4ce0d3e440bf0a605f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Ian C. Fiebelkorn
2. Sabine Kastner
3. Luiz Pessoa
4. Justin Riddle

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Ian C. Fiebelkorn
2. Sabine Kastner

Citations in the corpus

• Functional Specialization in the Attention Network (2019, background): “Specifically, the superior colliculus appeared to be instrumental in shifting spatial attention to a new location (Krauzlis et al. 2013), and the pulvinar appeared to be important for engaging at a new attentional focus (Fiebelkorn et al. 2019, Petersen et al. 1987).”