Attention is inherently biased towards the visual modality during most multisensory scenarios in adults, but the developmental trajectory towards visual dominance has not been fully elucidated. More recent evidence in primates and adult humans suggests a modality-specific stratification of the prefrontal cortex. The current study therefore used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neuronal correlates of proactive (following cues) and reactive (following probes) cognitive control for simultaneous audio-visual stimulation in 67 healthy adolescents (13–18 years old). Behavioral results were only partially supportive of visual dominance in adolescents, with both reduced response times and accuracy during attend-visual relative to attend-auditory trials. Differential activation of medial and lateral prefrontal cortex for processing incongruent relative to congruent stimuli (reactive control) was also only observed during attend-visual trials. There was no evidence of modality-specific prefrontal cortex stratification during the active processing of multisensory stimuli or during separate functional connectivity analyses. Attention-related modulations were also greater within visual relative to auditory cortex, but were less robust than observed in previous adult studies. Collectively, current results suggest a continued transition towards visual dominance in adolescence, as well as limited modality-specific specialization of prefrontal cortex and attentional modulations of unisensory cortex.

在成年人的大多数多感官场景中，注意力本质上偏向于视觉形态，但视觉主导的发展轨迹尚未完全阐明。最近在灵长类动物和成年人身上的证据表明，前额皮质存在特定模式的分层。因此，本研究使用功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 来研究 67 名健康青少年（13-18 岁）同步视听刺激的主动（跟随线索）和反应（跟随探针）认知控制的神经元相关性。行为结果仅部分支持青少年的视觉优势，相对于出席听觉试验，出席视觉期间的反应时间和准确性均减少。内侧和外侧前额叶皮层处理与一致刺激（反应性控制）不一致的差异激活也仅在参与视觉试验期间观察到。在多感觉刺激的主动处理过程中或在单独的功能连接分析过程中，没有证据表明模态特定的前额皮质分层。与听觉皮层相比，视觉皮层中与注意力相关的调节也更大，但不如之前的成人研究中观察到的那么稳健。总的来说，目前的结果表明，青春期向视觉主导的持续转变，以及前额叶皮层的有限模态特异性专业化和单感觉皮层的注意调节。