The distinct role of human PIT in attention control

Attention is a mechanism for brain to direct its resource, including both endogenous and exogenous processes, with the priority map serving to bridge these two processes. Recent studies have revealed that the posterior inferotemporal cortex (PITd) in the monkey brain and its functional homologue in the human brain (hPIT) serves as a node in the endogenous attentional control network, the current fMRI study investigated whether the human PIT area in fact functions as a priority map. The hPIT was robustly identified with strong spatial attentional modulation across motion, color, and shape discrimination tasks. The distinct role in attention control manifests in three ways. Compared to aIPS, FEF, and TPJ (classical nodes of attention), the hPIT showed stronger attentional modulation across all tasks regardless of the presence of visual inputs; and in addition, the hPIT uniquely showed more robust attentional modulation in the presence compared to the absence of visual input, demonstrating its role in both endogenous and exogenous attention which is a key aspect for attention priority map. Consistently, the hPIT also demonstrated function connectivity to both dorsal and ventral attention networks. Further, the modulation on hPIT is sensitive to attention load while invariant to the stimulus category. Our findings demonstrate the distinct role of hPIT in attention control, as an attentional priority map that integrates endogenous and exogenous processes.