p.25 Sperry (1988, p. 609) describes the central role that mental concepts
play in understanding brain function as follows:
Control from below upward is retained but is claimed to not furnish the
whole story. The full explanation requires that one take into account new, previously nonexistent, emergent properties, including
the mental, that interact causally at their own higher level and also exert causal control from above downward.
p.25-26 If there is hope of exploring causal control of brain systems
by mental states, it must lie through an understanding of how voluntary control is exerted over more automatic brain
systems. We argue that this can be approached through understanding the human attentional system at the levels
of both cognitive operations and neuronal activity.
p.26 Three fundamental findings are basic to this chapter.
First, the attention system of the brain is anatomically
separate from the data processing systems that perform operations on specific inputs even when attention is oriented
elsewhere. In this sense, the attention system is like other sensory and motor systems. It interacts with other parts of the
brain, but maintains its own identity.
Second, attention is carried out by a network of anatomical
areas. It is neither the property of a single center, nor a general function of the brain operating as a whole (Mesulam
1981, Rizzolatti et al 1985).
Third, the areas involved in attention carry out different
functions, and these specific computations can be specified in cognitive terms (Posner et al 1988).
p.26 In this chapter, we consider three major functions that have been prominent
in cognitive accounts of attention (Kahneman 1973, Posner & Boies 1971):
(a) orienting to sensory events;
(b) detecting signals for focal (conscious) processing, and
(c) maintaining a vigilant or alert state.
p.27 If a person or monkey attends to a location, events occurring at that
location are responded to more rapidly
p.32 If cues work by directing attention, they should also influence normal
performance.
p.35 An important attentional function is the ability to prepare and sustain
alertness to process high priority signals.
p.38 In summary, alertness involves a specific subsystem of attention
that acts on the posterior attention system to support visual orienting and probably also
influences other attentional subsystems.
p.39 many disorders of higher level cognition are said to be due to deficits
of attention.
