Attention and decision-making processes are fundamental to cognition. However, they are usually experimentally confounded, making it difficult to link neural observations to specific processes. Here we separated the effects of selective attention from the effects of decision-making on brain activity obtained from human participants (both sexes), using a two-stage task where the attended stimulus and decision were orthogonal and separated in time. Multivariate pattern analyses of multimodal neuroimaging data revealed the dynamics of perceptual and decision-related information coding through time with magnetoencephalography (MEG), through space with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and their combination (MEG-fMRI fusion). Our MEG results showed an effect of attention before decision-making could begin, and fMRI results showed an attention effect in early visual and frontoparietal regions. Model-based MEG-fMRI fusion suggested that attention boosted stimulus information in the frontoparietal and early visual regions before decision-making was possible. Together, our results suggest that attention affects neural stimulus representations in the frontoparietal regions independent of decision-making.

注意力和决策过程是认知的基础。然而，它们通常在实验上被混淆，使得很难将神经观察与特定过程联系起来。在这里，我们使用两阶段任务将选择性注意的影响与决策对人类参与者（男女）大脑活动的影响分开，其中参与的刺激和决策是正交的并且在时间上分开。多模态神经影像数据的多变量模式分析揭示了通过脑磁图（MEG）时间、通过功能磁共振成像（fMRI）空间及其组合（MEG-fMRI融合）感知和决策相关信息编码的动态。我们的 MEG 结果显示了在决策开始之前注意力的影响，而功能磁共振成像结果显示了早期视觉和额顶叶区域的注意力影响。基于模型的 MEG-fMRI 融合表明，在做出决策之前，注意力会增强额顶叶和早期视觉区域的刺激信息。总之，我们的结果表明，注意力会影响额顶叶区域的神经刺激表征，而与决策无关。