This book delineates cerebral mechanisms of attention in humans as they presently appear in the light of data obtained by using various modern brain-research techniques. While the book focuses primarily on the ways humans select environmental information, the selectivity manifest in human thinking, consciousness, and motor behavior is also dealt with in the framework of an expanded attention concept. By combining the most recent evidence from diverse fields of human brain research and relating these physiological data to achievements of modern cognitive psychology, the author has developed an integrative view of human information processing. This theory concentrates on mechanisms of attentional selection and on the automatic processing which provides a basis for the selective processes.

Foreword
Preface
1 Introduction: What Is Attention? 1
1.1 On the History of the Concept 1
1.2 Phenomena Commonly Referred to by "Attention" 4
1.3 Attention to Past and Future Stimuli 6
1.4 Attention in the Motor Domain 7
1.5 Attention and Thinking 9
2 Attention and Automaticity in Information Processing 11
2.1 Introduction 11
2.2 Different Forms of Automaticity 12
2.3 Early- and Late-Selection Theories of Attention 27
2.4 Resource or Capacity Theories of Attention 40
2.5 Spatial Attention as the "Primary" Form of Attention in Vision: The Feature-Integration Theory 51
2.6 Passive Attention and the Orienting Response 60
2.7 Attention and Automaticity: A Summary 68
3 Measurement of Brain Activity Underlying Information Processing 72
3.1 Behavioral and Physiological Research 72
3.2 Problems With Traditional Psychophysiological Methods 72
3.3 Event-Related Potentials in Cognitive Brain Research 76
3.4 Inferring From Event-Related Potentials to Brain Events 79
3.5 The Magnetoencephalogram (MEG) 84
3.6 Regional Cerebral Blood-Flow (rCBF) and Metabolism (rCMR) 91
4 Event-Related Potentials and Automatic Information Processing 102
4.1 Exogenous and Endogenous ERP Components 102
4.2 The Early Exogenous ERP Components in Audition 103
4.3 The Late Exogenous ERP Components 113
4.4 The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) 136
4.5 Mechanisms of Attention Switching in Audition 200
4.6 Arousal Provided by Automatic Processing in Audition 206
4.7 ERP Indications of Automaticity Developed by Extended Training 208
5 Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Automatic Processing 211
5.1 MEG Studies in Audition 212
5.2 MEG Studies in Vision 229
5.3 MEG Studies in the Somatosensory System 232
6 Attention and Event-Related Potentials 236
6.1 Auditory ERPs and Attention: One-Channel Tasks 236
6.2 Auditory ERPs and Attention: Multi-Channel Tasks (Selective Attention) 247
6.3 Selective Attention and Visual ERPs 305
6.4 Selective Attention and Somatosensory ERPs 342
6.5 ERPs and Resource Theories of Attention 347
7 MEG Studies of Attention 353
7.1 MEG Effects of Auditory Attention 353
7.2 MEG Effects of Visual Attention 357
8 Regional Cerebral Blood-Flow (rCBF) and Metabolic Studies of Selective Attention 361
8.1 Nontomographic rCBF Measurements During Attention 361
8.2 Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Studies of Attention 336[sic]
8.3 Classification of Activation Patterns as Reflected by Regional Blood-Flow and Metabolic Measures 371
9 Concluding Discussion 379
9.1 A Model of Automatic and Attentive Stimulus Processing in Audition 379
9.2 What is Attention? 392
References 401
Author Index 461
Subject Index 479