2. Introduction

The study of attention, and its importance with respect to human performance, goes back to the start of experimental psychology [4].  Over this long period of time, many researchers have investigated many aspects of attention, however, little emphasis has been placed on the functional anatomy (e.g. the physical brain areas responsible for attention).  Plenty of researchers have taken a cognitive approach however, little work has been presented from a neuroscience point of view.  Only recently have physiological studies taken place [3], [8], revealing a system of brain areas responsible for attention.   The present knowledge of the anatomical regions responsible for attention is incomplete and the little knowledge we do have is (according to the authors), speculative and controversial but does constitute a basis for more detailed study from a neuroscience point of view.

According to the authors, from a neuroscience approach, there are "three basic findings", defined as follows:

  1. Attention interacts with other parts of the brain but maintains its own identity.
  2. Attention is performed by several brain areas - not performed by a single area and certainly not performed by the entire brain!
  3. Each of the areas involved with attention perform different functions.
Furthermore, the authors divide attention into the following three sub-systems:
  1. Orienting to sensory events.
  2. Detecting of signals for conscious processing.
  3. Maintaining an alert state.
Many other researchers agree with this subdivision of the attention system.  However, there is no main consensus as to how many subsystems there actually are and the exact task of each subsystem.  For example, [2] include the subsystems above however also include  one additional subsystem responsible for "parsing" (e.g. recognizing  objects and separating them from their background).

2.1 Outline of the paper

The paper itself does not describe any new experiments but rather, for each subsystem, presents a review of the following: a) known anatomy, b) operations performed and c) relationship of the subsystem to the "data processing" system it operates on.  The review is presented by using an example for each subsystem.   The orienting subsystem is described using visual locations (e.g. vision), detecting is presented by reporting the presence of a target and alerting is described using the example of the preparation for processing of "important" (high priority) events.