Attention and consciousness Flashcards
Parietal cortex
Shifts attention between stimuli (disengagement), guides the attentional spotlight, enhances relevant input and suppresses irrelevant input
Occipitotemporal cortex
Supports visual feature-based attention.
Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)
Regulates general attention, suppresses irrelevant brain activity, maintains task control (cingulo-opercular network), and is affected by chronic stress and pain anticipation.
Prefrontal cortex (PFC)
Involved in attention control and alertness; DLPFC supports divided attention and multitasking; frontal eye fields coordinate goal-directed saccades and predict sensory consequences of self-initiated movement.
Pulvinar (thalamus)
Modulates attention to relevant stimuli, helps direct attention to spatial locations, and is key in the collicular-pulvinar spotlight system.
Superior colliculus
Provides visual input to the collicular-pulvinar attention system.
Temporoparietal junction (TPJ)
Part of the ventral attention network for bottom-up reorientation
Ventral frontal cortex
Part of the ventral orienting network, involved in stimulus-driven attention shifts.
Medial frontal cortex
Part of the cingulo-opercular network supporting sustained cognitive control.
Anterior insula
Contributes to the cingulo-opercular and salience networks, detecting when behavioural adaptation is needed.
Visual cortex (V1, V3, V4, V5, TE)
Attention binds features during fixations; higher visual areas process complex scenes; ventral stream processes unattended stimuli.
Amygdala
Detects threat-related features, facilitating rapid attention to emotionally salient stimuli.
Locus coeruleus
Drives the alerting network via noradrenergic projections to prefrontal and parietal cortices.
