The anatomical pathways underlying spatial versus non-spatial attention

Background: The frontal eye field (FEF) and the inferior frontal junction (IFJ) are crucially involved in visual attention, working memory, and cognitive control. Neuroimaging evidence, however, suggests that the role of FEF and IFJ in these functions can be dissociated according to their selectivity to spatial versus non-spatial information, respectively. Aims: We propose that the divergence in the connectivity fingerprints of FEF and IFJ underlies their specialized roles in guiding visual selection. We hypothesize predominant structural connectivity of FEF with the dorsal visual pathway compared to IFJ, and vice versa, predominant structural connectivity of IFJ with the ventral visual pathway compared to FEF. Methods: We first performed an activation likelihood estimation fMRI meta-analysis to accurately infer the localization of FEF and IFJ in MNI152 space. We only included functional localizers for FEF, and covert attention, working memory, and cognitive control paradigms for IFJ (both N = 20). We then employed the resulting peak coordinates to perform the seed-based analysis of publicly available diffusion MRI data using probabilistic tractography. Results: We show that in the right hemisphere, the connectivity likelihood of FEF with the superior parietal lobule is higher than IFJ, whereas the connectivity likelihood of IFJ with the lateral temporal cortex is higher than FEF. Conclusion: We report for the first time evidence of segregated anatomical pathways that could underlie the control of spatial versus non-spatial attention from FEF and IFJ, respectively. These results may open up new possibilities of fractionating the attention networks based on the representational content encoded.