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Published April 29, 2019 | Submitted
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The Contribution of Parietal Cortex to Visual Salience

Abstract

Unique stimuli stand out. In spite of an abundance of competing sensory stimuli, the detection of the most salient ones occurs without effort, and that detection contributes to the guidance of adaptive behavior. Neurons sensitive to the salience of visual stimuli are widespread throughout the primate visual system and are thought to shape the selection of visual targets. However, the source of the salience computation has remained elusive. Among the possible candidates are areas within posterior parietal cortex, which appear to be crucial in the control of visual attention and are thought to play a unique role in representing stimulus salience. Here we show that reversible inactivation of parietal cortex not only selectively reduces the representation of visual salience within the brain, but it also diminishes the influence of salience on visually guided behavior. These results demonstrate a distinct contribution of parietal areas to vision and visual attention.

Additional Information

The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. bioRxiv preprint first posted online Apr. 28, 2019. We thank E. Margalit and M. Plitt for assistance with parts of the behavioral analyses. This work was supported by NIH EY014924 to T.M.

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August 19, 2023
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