ABSTRACT
My work in the area of attention stems from four decades, roughly the same period as the career of Professor Vignolo. During that time, the methods and focus of studies of attention have changed, and in my view the field has become of increased interest. In the 1970s, I worked primarily on cognitive studies of attention with normal subjects, trying to characterize the mental operations involved in vigilance, selection, and conscious processing. In the 1980s, I worked with brain-injured patients to understand how lesions can selectively damage these mental operations. In the 1990s, neuroimaging techniques became available, and for the first time we could see the specific networks involved in attention. We found three, largely independent networks that were involved in achieving and maintaining the alert state, in orienting to sensory events, and in mediating among conflict. Now I have become interested in viewing one of these networks as generally related to self-regulation, a view that helps us to approach many forms of pathology. In the course of this odyssey, new methods have helped us to deepen our understanding of attention as an organic system with its own anatomy, circuitry, and pathologies. This view can integrate all of the approaches that were explored in the past, and it is of critical importance in understanding normal behavior and neurological and psychiatric disorders.
