Using marmosets to study the cognitive control of joint attention

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hans-Peter Thier
• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 502356914

The proposed project tries to unravel the neural underpinnings of joint attention and its context dependent control exploiting the advantages of the flat marmoset cortex that facilitates the usage of ECoG grids for the recording of local field potential activity (lfp) from extended parts of cerebral cortex. The working hypothesis builds on the applicant’s preliminary work on the control of joint attention in human and nonhuman primates and will be tested in marmosets trained to participate in paradigms that tap the animals´ ability to establish joint attention and its executive control. It posits that shifts of attention prompted by the other’s gaze towards an object of joint attention are a consequence of neural interactions in distinct lfp frequency bands in a fronto-temporo-parietal network that involves several hubs with specific functions: the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) is assumed to represent the network output level responsible for releasing a shift of attention to the location of the object of interest to the other. The relevant location is identified by a peak in a salience map of the visual environment in LIP that is the resultant of the convergence of two inputs impinging on LIP, information on the direction of the other’s gaze vector derived from the gaze following patch in temporal cortex and input from the inferior frontal junction area, the latter needed to distinguish the position of the relevant object from the position of distractor objects that may be hit by the same gaze vector. Information on the relevant spatial location and the object as it is thought to be bound by synchronization of activity in LIP and a representation of object features in inferotemporal cortex. Finally, information for the executive control of the observer’s shift of attention towards the object of joint attention is assumed to be drawn from prefrontal cortex.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants