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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access published online on June 29, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nsm027
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Involvement of medial temporal structures in reflexive attentional shift by gaze

Takashi Okada1, Wataru Sato2, Yasutaka Kubota3, Keiko Usui4, Yushi Inoue4, Toshiya Murai1, Takuji Hayashi1 and Motomi Toichi5

1Department of Neuropsychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 2Department of Comparative Study of Cognitive Development (funded by Benesse Corporation), Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Aichi, 3Health and Medical Services Center, Shiga University, Shiga, 4National Epilepsy Center, Shizuoka Institute of Epilepsy and Neurological Disorders and 5School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Recent studies have revealed that eye gaze triggers reflexive shift of the observer's visuospatial attention to its direction even if it does not predict any events in the environment. To determine whether medial temporal structures are involved in this reflexive gaze processing, an experiment of the gaze-cuing paradigm was carried out in seven epileptic patients who had undergone unilateral temporal lobectomy and nine age- and IQ-matched epileptic controls who had not undergone any surgical treatments. Gaze cues were presented for 200 ms to the unilateral visual field, after which subjects were required to localize targets as quickly as possible. They were also instructed that gaze directions were not predictive of the location of the targets. When the gaze cues stimulated the intact hemisphere in lobectomized patients or either hemisphere in controls, reaction times for correct responses were significantly shorter when gaze directions were toward the targets than away from the targets. This cuing effect was not manifested following stimulation of the lesioned hemisphere in lobectomized patients. These findings suggest that the medial temporal structures, including the amygdala, play a crucial role in the reflexive shift of attention triggered by another person's gaze direction in humans.

Keywords: medial temporal structures; gaze direction; reflexive attentional shift; cuing paradigm; anterior temporal lobectomy; unilateral visual field presentation

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Takashi Okada, Department of Neuropsychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University. 54 Shogoin-Kawaharacho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8507, Japan. E-mail: tksokada{at}kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Received February 1, 2007. Accepted May 18, 2007.


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