Abstract #1129

Hennig J, Speck O, Zhang L, Zhong K

The goal of this study was to control the subjects attention during the fMRI experiment, especially for studies of primary sensory areas, and to measure and compare the influence of controlled attention on the activation. The subjects attention is directed towards random transient color changes of the fixation point. With this controlled attention, the amount of false positive activation outside the primary visual areas is significantly reduced. Visual response is also reduced due to the absence of attentional modulation between baseline and activation state. Therefore, only the intended effect of sensory input is detected.