Visual temporal cuing effect on the tactile attention: An fMRI study

Visual orienting attention is well researched by using a visual cue. The tactile spatial attention and the tactile-visual spatial attention have been compared by the brain-imaging data. But the tactile temporal orienting of attention is little be researched or no have any researched. In our study, We used a top-down attention paradigm in which a visual cue directs the attention of participants to tactile target stimulus in TT (tactile temporal) task and TN (tactile neural) attention task. In the task, the attention was manipulated to tactile temporal information(cue-target interval is short or long) by a visual cue, and the tactile target stimulus was told to be. Neutral task was gave no information about spatial location. Subjects were also scanned during a resting baseline condition in which subjects clicked the reaction key ten times. The reaction time for spatial location attention is faster than that without a tactile stimulus. Behavioral results of reaction time no have any significant difference between tactile temporal task and tactile neutral task. We thought that the visual information may be affecting the tactile temporal attention neural network. Brain-imaging data showed that IPL (inferior parietal lobe) and ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) were activated in the visual spatial attention task and the activation was enhanced during the task with the tactile stimulus.