Functions of the human frontoparietal attention network: Evidence from neuroimaging

- Frontoparietal network controls selection of spatial and non-spatial information.
- Frontoparietal network contains 18 distinct topographic representations.
- Research is beginning to explore functional dissociations between subregions.
- Attention mechanisms are supported by distributed connectivity patterns across areas.

Human frontoparietal cortex has long been implicated as a source of attentional control. However, the mechanistic underpinnings of these control functions have remained elusive due to limitations of neuroimaging techniques that rely on anatomical landmarks to localize patterns of activation. The recent advent of topographic mapping via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has allowed the reliable parcellation of the network into 18 independent subregions in individual subjects, thereby offering unprecedented opportunities to address a wide range of empirical questions as to how mechanisms of control operate. Here, we review the human neuroimaging literature that has begun to explore space-based, feature-based, object-based and category-based attentional control within the context of topographically defined frontoparietal cortex.