Human Frontal Eye Fields and Visual Search

Recent physiological recording studies in monkeys have suggested that the frontal eye fields (FEFs) are involved in visual scene analysis even when eye movement commands are not required. We examined this proposed function of the human frontal eye fields during performance of visual search tasks in which difficulty was matched and eye movements were neither necessary nor required. Magnetic stimulation over FEF modulated performance on a conjunction search task and a simple feature search task in which the target was unpredictable from trial to trial, primarily by increasing false alarm responses. Simple feature search with a predictable target was not affected. The results establish that human FEFs are critical to visual selection, regardless of the need to generate a saccade command.