PSYC5578 · Psychology

Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

Over a century ago, William James (1890) wrote, "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought." Since that time, the study of attention has become one of the core topics of inquiry in the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Despite its apparent simplicity, the cognitive processes and neural mechanisms underlying attention are quite complex. In this course, following an introduction on what attention is and considering the role that attention plays in everyday life, we will discuss the following key topics on the neuroscience of human attention: methods of cognitive neuroscience, deficits in attention, attentional selection in the brain, voluntary and involuntary influences on attention, the control of attention, temporal attention, and predictive coding models of attention.