Endogenous attention is the cognitive function that selects the relevant pieces of sensory information to achieve goals and it is known to be controlled by dorsal fronto-parietal brain areas. Here we expand this notion by identifying a control attention area located in the temporal lobe. By combining a demanding behavioral paradigm with functional neuroimaging and diffusion tractography, we show that like fronto-parietal attentional areas, the human posterior inferotemporal cortex exhibits significant attentional modulatory activity. This area is functionally distinct from surrounding cortical areas, and is directly connected to parietal and frontal attentional regions. These results show that attentional control spans three cortical lobes and overarches large distances through fiber pathways that run orthogonally to the dominant anterior-posterior axes of sensory processing, thus suggesting a different organizing principle for cognitive control.

内源性注意力是选择相关感官信息片段以实现目标的认知功能，众所周知，它受背侧额顶叶脑区控制。在这里，我们通过识别位于颞叶的控制注意力区域来扩展这一概念。通过将苛刻的行为范式与功能性神经影像学和扩散束成像相结合，我们表明，与额顶叶注意区域一样，人类后颞下皮层表现出显着的注意调节活动。该区域在功能上与周围的皮质区域不同，并且直接连接到顶叶和额叶注意区域。