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