Attention is a core property of all perceptual and cognitive operations. Given limited capacity to process competing options, attentional mechanisms select, modulate, and sustain focus on information most relevant for behavior. A significant problem, however, is that attention is so ubiquitous that it is unwieldy to study. We propose a taxonomy based on the types of information that attention operates over—the targets of attention. At the broadest level, the taxonomy distinguishes between external attention and internal attention. External attention refers to (...) the selection and modulation of sensory information. External attention selects locations in space, points in time, or modality-specific input. Such perceptual attention can also select features defined across any of these dimensions, or object representations that integrate over space, time, and modality. Internal attention refers to the selection, modulation, and maintenance of internally generated information, such as task rules, responses, long-term memory, or working memory. Working memory, in particular, lies closest to the intersection between external and internal attention. The taxonomy provides an organizing framework that recasts classic debates, raises new issues, and frames understanding of neural mechanisms. (shrink)

Many organisms possess multiple sensory systems, such as vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. The possession of multiple ways of sensing the world offers many benefits. However, combining information from different senses also poses many challenges for the nervous system. In recent years there has been dramatic progress in understanding how information from the different senses gets integrated in order to construct useful representations of external space. This volume brings together the leading researchers from a broad range of scientific approaches (...) to present the first overview of this central topic in cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)