Spatiotemporal dynamics of attentional orienting and reorienting revealed by fast optical imaging

This study provides new findings about the characterization of the
neural spatio-temporal dynamics of attentional processes, by employing
event-related optical signal (EROS) along with Granger causality. This
combined approach allowed us to trace the time-course of brain
activations of cortical regions engaged in endogenous orienting and
reorienting processes, highlighting different causal roles played by
dorsal, ventral and visual areas in visuospatial attention. Our results
suggest a causal activation pattern comprising dorsal and visual regions
both in orienting and reorienting, adding to the latter process the
involvement of ventral areas which exhibit a post perceptual function