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. 1995 Jun 20;92(13):5969–5972. doi: 10.1073/pnas.92.13.5969

Positron-emission tomography studies of cross-modality inhibition in selective attentional tasks: closing the "mind's eye".

R Kawashima 1, B T O'Sullivan 1, P E Roland 1
PMCID: PMC41623  PMID: 7597062

Abstract

It is a familiar experience that we tend to close our eyes or divert our gaze when concentrating attention on cognitively demanding tasks. We report on the brain activity correlates of directing attention away from potentially competing visual processing and toward processing in another sensory modality. Results are reported from a series of positron-emission tomography studies of the human brain engaged in somatosensory tasks, in both "eyes open" and "eyes closed" conditions. During these tasks, there was a significant decrease in the regional cerebral blood flow in the visual cortex, which occurred irrespective of whether subjects had to close their eyes or were instructed to keep their eyes open. These task-related deactivations of the association areas belonging to the nonrelevant sensory modality were interpreted as being due to decreased metabolic activity. Previous research has clearly demonstrated selective activation of cortical regions involved in attention-demanding modality-specific tasks; however, the other side of this story appears to be one of selective deactivation of unattended areas.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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