Selective attention to auditory and visual modalities converges onto noncholinergic basal forebrain neurons.

ABSTRACT: Selective attention enables animals and humans to prioritize behaviorally relevant stimuli among competing sensory inputs. Although the basal forebrain (BF) is known to modulate cortical activity and support attention, it remains unclear whether BF activity directly conveys an attention signal. Here, we show that selective attention to auditory and visual stimuli converges onto a shared population of noncholinergic BF neurons. Using a cross-modal task where rats rapidly switched attention between modalities, we found that these neurons responded strongly to attended targets but weakly to the same stimuli when ignored, regardless of modality. These effects closely tracked both task-driven and spontaneous attention shifts on a single-trial basis. Moreover, BF responses reflected the linear s

SUBMITTER: Liu SW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12922739 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature