Visual selection during covert visual search in the human cortex

Introduction: During visual search for a target object within a cluttered scene, a 'frontoparietal network' is engaged. The core components of the frontoparietal network are the frontal eye fields (FEF) and several sub-regions of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) (1,2). It is still unclear if the activation in the frontoparietal network during visual search reflects a spatial selection process (3,4). The aim of this fMRI-study was to analyze to which degree the population activity of these areas in the human brain during visual search reflects spatial attention and other operations involved in visuo-motor integrati…