Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book combines neurology, congnitive psychology, and cognitive science, with a bit of philosophy, to efectively explain how the brain attends. LaBerge starts with conceptual issues, and describes experiments on attention that reveal the structure of preparatory and selective attention. Attention, LaBerge notes, can be implemented by various algorithms. A stimulus can be enhanced, its surround (and therefore distractors) can be inhibited, or bothe can take place at the same time. He also makes the useful distinction between preparation and expectation. Expectation involves working memory while preparation involves actual activity in cortical sites that will code for a expected stimulus. After this is done, he presents evidence of modulation by attention in cortical activity. Finally, he shows how two subcortical structures, more importantly the thalamus, implements tha algorithms for attention. The thalamus then acts as a filter, enhancing the processing of a target, so that it can be attended to. This, is an oversimplification, however. LaBerge considers various cortical areas and their relevance for attention, and concludes that attention emerges form distribuited activity in the brain, and cannot be centered to one mechanism only.
The theory does of conurse require some polishing. Also, the main evidence in favour of his attentional mode in the book, comes from a modeling study. More positive evidence would be required, but I'm certain the relevant work has been done science the book was published. Imaging studies, as well as recording studies give good reason to accept the model.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Attentional Processing: The Brain's Art of Mindfulness (Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience)
In the past two decades, the familiar experience of attention--the emphasis on a particular mental activity so that it "fills the mind"--has been subjected to much scientific inquiry. David LaBerge now provides a systematic view of the attention process as it occurs in everyday perception, thinking, and action. Drawing from a variety of research methods and findings from cognitive psychology, neurobiology, and computer science, he presents a masterful synthesis of what is understood about attentional processing.
LaBerge explores how we are able to restrict the input of extraneous and confusing information, or prepare to process a future stimulus, in order to take effective action. As well as describing the pathways in the cortex presumed to be involved in attentional processing, he examines the hypothesis that two subcortical structures, the superior colliculus and the thalamus, contain circuit mechanisms that embody an algorithm of attention. In addition, he takes us through various ways of posing the problem, from an information-processing description of how attention works to a consideration of some of the cognitive and behavioral consequences of the brain's computations, such as desiring, judging, imaging, and remembering.
Attentional Processing is a highly sophisticated integration of contributions from several fields of neuroscience. It brings together the latest efforts to solve the puzzle of attention: how it works, how it is modulated, what its benefits are, and how it is expressed in the brain.
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