Title
Effective connectivity in target stimulus processing: a dynamic causal modeling study of visual oddball task.
Abstract
To investigate the fundamental connectivity architecture of neural structures involved in the goal-directed processing of target events.Twenty healthy volunteers underwent event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a standard oddball task. In the task, two types of visual stimuli - rare (target) and frequent - were randomly presented, and subjects were instructed to mentally count the target stimuli. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM), in combination with Bayes factors was used to compare competing neurophysiological models with different intrinsic connectivity structures and input regions within the network of brain regions underlying target stimulus processing.Conventional analysis of fMRI data revealed significantly greater activation in response to the target stimuli (in comparison to the frequent stimuli) in several brain regions, including the intraparietal sulci and supramarginal gyri, the anterior and posterior cingulate gyri, the inferior and middle frontal gyri, the superior temporal sulcus, the precuneus/cuneus, and the subcortical grey matter (caudate and thalamus). The most extensive cortical activations were found in the right intraparietal sulcus (IPS), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the right lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). These three regions were entered into the DCM. A comparison on a group level revealed that the dynamic causal models in which the ACC and alternatively the IPS served as input regions were superior to a model in which the PFC was assumed to receive external inputs. No significant difference was observed between the fully connected models with ACC and IPS as input regions. Subsequent analysis of the intrinsic connectivity within two investigated models (IPS and ACC) disclosed significant parallel forward connections from the IPS to the frontal areas and from the ACC to the PFC and the IPS.Our findings indicate that during target stimulus processing there is a bidirectional frontoparietal information flow, very likely reflecting parallel activation of two distinct but partially overlapping attentional or attentional/event-encoding neural systems. Additionally, a simple hierarchy within the right frontal lobe is suggested with the ACC exerting influence over the PFC.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.12.020
NeuroImage
Keywords
Field
DocType
fMRI,Target detection,Oddball paradigm,Connectivity,Dynamic causal modeling
Developmental psychology,Neuroscience,Precuneus,Functional magnetic resonance imaging,Oddball paradigm,Psychology,Anterior cingulate cortex,Cuneus,Stimulus (physiology),Superior temporal sulcus,Posterior cingulate
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
35
2
1053-8119
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
13
0.83
10
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Milan Brázdil1234.78
Michal Mikl2234.01
Radek Mareček3163.26
P Krupa4234.07
Ivan Rektor5242.47