Visual attention is associated with neuronal changes across the brain, and these widespread signals are generally assumed to underlie a unitary mechanism of attention. However, using signal detection theory, attention-related effects on performance can be partitioned into changes in either the subject’s criterion or sensitivity. Neuronal modulations associated with only sensitivity changes were previously observed in visual cortex, raising questions about which structures mediate attention-related changes in criterion and whether individual neurons are involved in multiple components of attention. Here, we recorded from monkey lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and found that, in contrast to visual cortex, neurons in LPFC changed their firing rates, pairwise correlation, and Fano factor when subjects changed either their criterion or their sensitivity. These results indicate that attention-related neuronal modulations in separate brain regions are not a monolithic signal and instead can be linked to distinct behavioral changes.

中文翻译：

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标准或敏感性的注意力变化与外侧前额叶皮层的鲁棒调节有关

视觉注意力与整个大脑的神经元变化有关，这些广泛的信号通常被认为是单一注意力机制的基础。然而，利用信号检测理论，注意力对表现的影响可以分为受试者标准或敏感性的变化。先前在视觉皮层中观察到仅与敏感性变化相关的神经元调节，引发了关于哪些结构介导与注意力相关的标准变化以及单个神经元是否参与注意力的多个组成部分的问题。在这里，我们从猴子外侧前额叶皮层 (LPFC) 进行记录，发现与视觉皮层相反，当受试者改变其标准或敏感性时，LPFC 中的神经元会改变其放电率、成对相关性和 Fano 因子。这些结果表明，不同大脑区域中与注意力相关的神经元调节并不是一个单一的信号，而是可能与不同的行为变化相关。