Schedule of Events | Symposia

Characterizing frontal-eye-field connectivity in reading and attention

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Shaylyn Kress^1,2,3, Josh Neudorf⁴, Chelsea Ekstrand¹, Ron Borowsky³; ¹University of Lethbridge, ²Western University, ³University of Saskatchewan, ⁴Simon Fraser University

Background. There is increasing evidence that reading and attention are overlapping and interactive processes. The frontal-eye-fields (FEFs) may be relevant to the theories of shared reading-attention processes, given the involvement of the FEFs in oculomotor control. The goal of this study was to localize interactive reading x attention activation in the FEFs, and examine the structural connectivity profile of the FEFs. Methods. We examined fMRI results from 30 participants who completed a hybrid reading-attention task to identify whether any portion of the FEFs displayed interactive reading x attention activation. We used this subregion as the ROI for a structural connectivity analysis of the open Human Connectome Project (HCP) data. For this analysis, we chose communicability as our measure of structural connectivity, to reflect the strength of indirect connections between regions. Results. In our fMRI dataset, we observed a reading x attention interaction in BOLD intensity in a subregion of the left FEF. In the HCP data, we then observed high communicability between the right hemisphere homologue of this FEF subregion and the basal ganglia (involved in syllabic rhythm processing). These connections appear to support tracts to the cerebellar Crus I/II (involved in eye movements and semantics), and superior parietal lobule (involved in attentional orienting and phonetic decoding). Conclusion. The results of this study support theories of overlapping and interactive reading and attention processes, and highlight a network of regions that should be examined in future studies of functional and structural connectivity.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Other