VISUAL ATTENTION: A REVIEW ABOUT ATTENTIONAL NETWORKS OF THE BRAIN

Abstract

The concept of attention has vastly changed along last decades. Attention has been considered an information selective mechanism (a filter) asswell as a pool of limited resources of processing that are assigned to different task. However, during last years there has been an integration of the many aspects traditionally related to attention. One of the most important characteristics in this integrative approach is the consideration of attention as a non-unitary system. This approach assumes that attention is a network of systems or neural areas that carry out the control of information processing. These nets are the anterior, the posterior and the vigilance. The anterior or executive network is related to the control of the detection and the selection of objectives and goals. The posterior system is involved in the orientation of attention to objects, to space locations, and/or to memory. The vigilance net is responsible for our readiness for the information processing.