The basal ganglia are implicated in a range of perceptual functions [1], in addition to their well-known role in the regulation of movement [2]. One unifying explanation for these diverse roles is that the basal ganglia control the level of commitment to particular motor or cognitive outcomes based on the behavioral context [3, 4]. If this explanation is applicable to the allocation of visual spatial attention, then the involvement of basal ganglia circuits should incorporate the subject’s expectations about the spatial location of upcoming events as well as the routing of visual signals that guide the response. From the viewpoint of signal detection theory, these changes in the level of commitment might correspond to shifts in the subject’s decision criterion, one of two distinct components recently ascribed to visual selective attention [5]. We tested this idea using unilateral optogenetic activation of neurons in the dorsal striatum of mice during a visual spatial attention task [6], taking advantage of the ability to specifically target medium spiny neurons in the “direct” pathway associated with promoting responses [7, 8]. By comparing results across attention task conditions, we found that direct-pathway activation caused changes in performance determined by the spatial probability and location of the visual event. Moreover, across conditions with identical visual stimulation, activation shifted the decision criterion selectively when attention was directed to the contralateral visual field. These results demonstrate that activity through the basal ganglia may play an important and distinct role among the multifarious mechanisms that accomplish visual spatial attention.

除了众所周知的运动调节作用 [2] 之外，基底神经节还涉及一系列感知功能 [1]。对这些不同角色的一个统一解释是，基底神经节根据行为背景控制对特定运动或认知结果的承诺水平 [3, 4]。如果这种解释适用于视觉空间注意力的分配，那么基底神经节回路的参与应该结合受试者对即将发生的事件的空间位置的期望以及引导反应的视觉信号的路由。从信号检测理论的角度来看，承诺水平的这些变化可能对应于主体决策标准的变化，这是最近归因于视觉选择性注意的两个不同组成部分之一 [5]。我们在视觉空间注意任务期间使用小鼠背侧纹状体中神经元的单侧光遗传学激活来测试这个想法 [6]，利用在与促进反应相关的“直接”途径中特异性靶向中等多刺神经元的能力 [7, 8]。通过比较注意力任务条件下的结果，我们发现直接通路激活导致由视觉事件的空间概率和位置决定的性能变化。此外，在具有相同视觉刺激的条件下，当注意力集中在对侧视野时，激活会选择性地改变决策标准。这些结果表明，通过基底神经节的活动可能在完成视觉空间注意的多种机制中发挥重要而独特的作用。