Increased Metabolic Activity, Not Preemptive Blood Flow Increase, Underlies Attentional Modulation in Primary Visual Cortex

Farshad Moradi¹, Richard Buxton¹

Previous studies found that attention produces robust BOLD modulation with only modest increase in firing activity in primary visual cortex. This could be due to a pure preemptive CBF increase with no relation to local neuronal firing. We tested the presence of such a mechanism using combined CBF/BOLD measurements to estimate relative CMRO2. Results show that attentional enhancement of V1 activity involves an increase of both metabolic activity and blood flow, rather than a preemptive increase in blood flow alone. The ratio of CBF to CMRO2 change appears to be higher when the stimulus is unattended than when attended.