Background: The present study used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate the neural substrates for modified version of Treisman’s visual search task. Methods: Two volunteers who gave informed consent participated MEG experiment. One was 27- year old male and another was 24-year-old female. All were right handed. Experiment were performed using a 306-channel biomagnetometer (Neuromag LTD). There were three task conditions in this experiment. The first was searching an open circle among seven closed circles (open condition). The second was searching a closed circle among seven uni-rectionally open circles (closed condition). And the third was searching a closed circle among seven eight-ectionally open circles (random (closed) condition). In one run, participants performed one task condition so there were three runs in one session of experiment. During one session, 128 trials were performed during every three runs. One participant underwent one session of experiment. The participant pressed button when they found targets. Magnetic source localization images were generated using software programs that allowed for interactive identification of a common set of fiduciary points in the MRI and MEG coordinate frames. Results: In each participant we can found activations of anterior cingulate, primary visual and association cortices, posterior parietal cortex and brain areas in the vicinity of thalamus. Conclusions: we could find activations corresponding to anterior and posterior visual attention systems.

Background: The present study used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate the neural substrates for modified version of Treisman’s visual search task. Methods: Two volunteers who gave informed consent participated MEG experiment. One was 27- year old male and another was 24-year-old female. All were right handed. Experiment were performed using a 306-channel biomagnetometer (Neuromag LTD). There were three task conditions in this experiment. The first was searching an open circle among seven closed circles (open condition). The second was searching a closed circle among seven uni-rectionally open circles (closed condition). And the third was searching a closed circle among seven eight-ectionally open circles (random (closed) condition). In one run, participants performed one task condition so there were three runs in one session of experiment. During one session, 128 trials were performed during every three runs. One participant underwent one session of experiment. The participant pressed button when they found targets. Magnetic source localization images were generated using software programs that allowed for interactive identification of a common set of fiduciary points in the MRI and MEG coordinate frames. Results: In each participant we can found activations of anterior cingulate, primary visual and association cortices, posterior parietal cortex and brain areas in the vicinity of thalamus. Conclusions: we could find activations corresponding to anterior and posterior visual attention systems.

Visual search, Magnetoencephalography, Attention