- seCtIon tHRee: BoDY AnD WoRLD
priorities. When perceptual load is low, however, spare capacity from processing
the task-related information ‘spills over’, so that we perceive task-irrelevant infor-
mation via late attentional selection strongly influenced by bottom-up stimuli.
This way of thinking saves us from trying to locate a ‘fixed locus’ of attention,
whether acting as a ‘gateway’ to consciousness or serving some other purpose
(Lavie, Beck, and Konstantinou, 2014, p. 8). Nonetheless, it does retain the idea
of awareness or consciousness as a location or container which things can get
into only if they meet certain attentional criteria. It also relies on the idea of a
‘perceptual processing stream from unconscious to conscious levels’ (p. 8). Both
imply Cartesian materialism (see Chapter 5).
Attention and memory are closely related, and some theories of attention treat
short-term memory, with its limited capacity, as the relevant resource to be
competed for, or the container to be filled. In other words, being attended to is
equivalent to getting into short-term memory, and attention is the same thing as
‘the processes that allow information to be encoded in working memory’ (Prinz,
2012, p. 93). Other theories do not assume this equivalence, and there are numer-
ous other ways in which attention and memory are connected. In fact, theories
of attention are relevant to almost every aspect of brain function, including the
neural correlates (Chapter 4), the binding problem (Chapter 6), and unconscious
processing (Chapter 8). Predictive-processing models of cognition may also throw
light on attention. Studying functional connectivity in large-scale brain networks,
psychologist Monica Rosenberg and her colleagues at Yale University (2017)
argue that attention is a network property of brain computation and that the
functional architecture underlying attention can be measured even when peo-
ple are not engaged in any task, with individual differences found in the dorsal
attention system as well as the default mode network (which is discussed later
in this chapter). But here we must concentrate on the core relationship between
attention and consciousness.
Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues in Parma, Italy (Rizzolatti,
Riggio, and Sheliga, 1994; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2010) have suggested a ‘pre-
motor theory’ of selective spatial attention in which attending to a particular posi-
tion in space is like preparing to look or reach towards it. In experiments using
single-cell recording in monkeys, they found that subsets of premotor neurons
involved in preparing to make visually guided actions directed towards a par-
ticular part of space are selectively activated when attention shifts to that area.
Subsequent studies have explored the role of neurons in the frontal eye fields
(FEF) within the frontal cortex, finding that stimulating them can elicit saccades
and shifts in spatial attention, and that when stimulation is not enough to induce
an eye movement, perception is still enhanced for the areas the movement would
have been towards. Findings like these highlight the common origin of spatial
attention and eye movements, suggesting the existence of a flow of information
from visual selection to motor planning, a flow which can be adjusted according
to the demands of the task at hand. ‘There is no need to postulate two control
systems in the brain – one for spatial attention and one for action. The system that
controls action is the same that controls what we call spatial attention’ (Rizzolatti,
Riggio, and Sheliga, 1994, p. 256).
Other experiments have suggested a more complex story, however. FEF seems
to contain two separate groups of neurons, one for covert shifts of attention
‘Instead of attention
having a fixed locus, the
[perceptual load] theory
argues that awareness
depends on the
availability of limited-
capacity attention’
(Lavie, Beck, and Konstantinou,
2014, p. 8)
‘The system that
controls action is the
same that controls what
we call spatial attention’
(Rizzolatti, Riggio, and Sheliga,
1994, p. 256)