Neural Cascade of Attentional Control

The January 2007 of PLoS Biology contains an interesting article on the Top-Down Control of our Visual-Spatial Attention by Grent-‘t-Jong and Woldorff, and an accompanying review by Weaver. They "extracted a more precise picture of the neural mechanisms of attentional control by combining two complementary methods of measuring cognitive brain activity: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). fMRI offers information on a millimeter scale about the locations of brain activity, whereas EEG offers temporal information on a scale of milliseconds. Their results indicate that visual-spatial attentional control is initiated in frontal brain areas, joined shortly afterwards by parietal involvement. Together, these brain areas then prepare relevant areas in the visual cortex for performing enhanced processing of visual input in the attended region of space."