Spatial attention selectively alters visual cortical representation during target anticipation

Attention enables us to efficiently and flexibly interact with the environment by prioritizing specific image locations and features in preparation for responding to stimuli. Using a concurrent psychophysics–fMRI experiment, we investigate how covert spatial attention modulates responses in human visual cortex before target onset and how it affects subsequent behavioral performance. Performance improves at cued locations and worsens at uncued locations compared to distributed attention, demonstrating a selective processing tradeoff. Pre-target BOLD responses in cortical visual field maps reveal two key changes: First, a stimulus-independent baseline shift, with increases near cued locations and decreases elsewhere, paralleling behavioral results. Second, a shift in population receptive field centers toward the attended location. Both effects increase in higher visual areas. Together, these findings reveal that spatial attention has large effects on visual cortex prior to target appearance, altering neural response properties across multiple visual field maps and enhancing performance through anticipatory mechanisms. Covert attention to a specific location enhances performance. Here, the authors show that anticipating an attentional target selectively alters visual cortex activity, modulating neural responses and spatial tuning via top-down attentional mechanisms.