SII and the fronto-parietal areas are involved in visually cued tactile top-down spatial attention: a functional MRI study

Visual cue-oriented, tactile top-down attention (vTA) has been well investigated behaviorally. However, vTA-related brain activation remains unclear, and whether SI (primary somatosensory cortex) or SII (secondary somatosensory cortex) is modulated by the top-down process of tactile cognition remains particularly controversial. We used the Posner paradigm in which a visual spatial cue directed attention to a tactile target [tactile spatial attention (TS) task]. The TS is compared with a visual nonspatially cued, tactile attention task [tactile neutral attention (TN) task]. The behavioral results showed no significant differences between the TS and TN tasks. However, we considered the possibility that the visual spatial hint affected the TS neural network. Brain-imaging data showed that the inferior parietal lobe was activated more during the TS task than during the TN task. Furthermore, we present evidence to support SII modulation by top-down processing during the TS task.