TY - JOUR TI - Preparation for upcoming attentional states in the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex AU - Günseli, Eren AU - Aly, Mariam A2 - Barense, Morgan A2 - Behrens, Timothy E A2 - Nobre, Kia VL - 9 PY - 2020 DA - 2020/04/07 SP - e53191 C1 - eLife 2020;9:e53191 DO - 10.7554/eLife.53191 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.53191 AB - Goal-directed attention is usually studied by providing individuals with explicit instructions on what they should attend to. But in daily life, we often use past experiences to guide our attentional states. Given the importance of memory for predicting upcoming events, we hypothesized that memory-guided attention is supported by neural preparation for anticipated attentional states. We examined preparatory coding in the human hippocampus and mPFC, two regions that are important for memory-guided behaviors, in two tasks: one where attention was guided by memory and another in which attention was explicitly instructed. Hippocampus and mPFC exhibited higher activity for memory-guided vs. explicitly instructed attention. Furthermore, representations in both regions contained information about upcoming attentional states. In the hippocampus, this preparation was stronger for memory-guided attention, and occurred alongside stronger coupling with visual cortex during attentional guidance. These results highlight the mechanisms by which memories are used to prepare for upcoming attentional goals. KW - preparatory attention KW - learning KW - visual search KW - episodic memory KW - memory retrieval JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -