NBIO Presents: James Bisley, PhD (UCLA)

Attention and decision making in the lateral intraparietal area: Two sides of the same coin? 

The term attention is used to describe a number of behavioral and neuronal phenomena. Using a change detection task, I will show that attentional modulation in V4 cannot explain behavior in the task, even when attention is cued, but activity in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) correlates well with behavior under all attentional conditions. I will then present data from a visual search task that shows that the mechanisms that have been related to decision making in LIP can explain reaction times in search, but differences due to set size or attentional cues seem to only be related to the starting level of activity. I will also show that responses on error trials indicate that the duration of the decision is shorter than expected and much of the ramping activity seen in LIP in decision making is likely related to the motor response. These results are consistent with the view of LIP as a priority map, which guides eye movements and covert spatial attention.