The Attention Systems of the Human Brain

This introductory chapter presents a brief overview of attention processes, with their putative neural bases in the human brain. The interested reader will find more material in the list of further readings at the end of the chapter. Attention is conceived as a heterogeneous set of processes, which allow us to select and act on external or internal sources of information and produce behavior which can take into account both our goals and the occurrence of unexpected events. The integrated functioning of frontoparietal networks, with specific interhemispheric differences often favoring the right hemisphere, is crucial for attention processes.