ABSTRACT
When facing threats from predators or competitors, monitoring the surroundings for early detection can reduce risk. While the adaptive value of such vigilance has attracted much attention, fewer studies have focused on proximate determinants. In this chapter, I highlight causal factors involved in producing vigilance. Threats are perceived and then assessed to produce a response like freezing or fleeing. Causal factors in vigilance can be involved at the perceptual stage and during processing in higher brain centres. I examine causal factors from hormones to specialized brain cells as well as cognitive processes involving counting, lateralization, and interval timing. Collaboration between neuroscientists and ethologists in the future is likely to further advances in the study of causal factors producing vigilance.
