Attention spotlight in V1-based cortico-cortical interactions in human visual hierarchy

Attention is often viewed as a mental spotlight, which can be scaled like a zoom lens at specific spatial locations and features a center-surround gradient. Here, we demonstrate a neural signature of attention spotlight in signal transmission along the visual hierarchy. fMRI background connectivity analysis was performed between retinotopic V1 and downstream areas to characterize the spatial distribution of inter-areal interaction under two attentional states. We found that, compared to diffused attention, focal attention sharpened the spatial gradient in the strength of the background connectivity. Dynamic causal modeling analysis further revealed the effect of attention in both the feedback and feedforward connectivity between V1 and extrastriate cortex. In a context which induced a strong effect of crowding, the effect of attention in the background connectivity profile diminished. Our findings reveal a context-dependent attention prioritization in information transmission via modulating the recurrent processing across the early stages in human visual cortex.