There is perhaps no more compelling discipline in the behavioral and brain sciences today than cognitive neuroscience. This book provides a systematic examination of the cognitive neuroscience of attention, taking as its thesis that attention is not a unitary function of the brain. To fully understand attention, therefore, requires examination of the components of attention, an undertaking first begun in my previous book Varieties of Attention, published in 1 984. More than a decade later, the startling advances made in cognitive neuroscience now make possible an understanding of the neural events that are associated with the different forms of attentive behavior.

The Attentive Brain discusses the maj or cognitive neuroscience techniques used for examining attention, the mechanisms of the different varieties of attention, and the influence of development and pathology on attention. My attempt in the coverage of topics was to be as broad as possible and to discuss areas in which the most progress has been made in research. It is no longer possible for any book in cognition or neuroscience to be comprehensive, and this book is no exception. Nevertheless, several of the major areas of modern attention research are discussed.