Prioritized maps of space in human frontoparietal cortex

Priority maps are theorizedtobecomposedoflarge populationsofneurons organized topographically intoamapofgaze-centered space whose activity spatiallytags salient and behaviorallyrelevant information. Here,weidentifiedfour prioritymap candidates along human posterior intraparietal sulcus (IPS0 -IPS3) and two along the precentral sulcus (PCS) that contained reliable retinotopically organized maps of contralateral visual space. Persistent activity increased from posterior-to-anterior IPS areas and from inferior-to-superior PCS areas during the maintenance of a working memory representation, the maintenance of covert attention, and the maintenance of a saccade plan. Moreover, decoders trained to predict the locations on one task (e.g., working memory) cross-predicted the locations on other tasks (e.g., attention) in superior PCS and IPS2, suggesting that these patterns of maintenance activity may be interchangeable across the tasks. Such properties make these two areas in frontal and parietal cortex viable priority map candidates.