Not so different after all: The same oscillatory processes support different types of attention

Abstract

Scientific research from the last two decades has provided a vast amount of evidence that brain oscillations reflect physiological activity enabling diverse cognitive processes. The goal of this review is to give a broad empirical and conceptual overview of how ongoing oscillatory activity may support attention processes. Keeping in mind that definitions of cognitive constructs like attention are prone to being blurry and ambiguous, the present review focuses mainly on the neural correlates of 'top-down' attention deployment. In particular, we will discuss modulations of (ongoing) oscillatory activity during spatial, temporal, selective, and internal attention. Across these seemingly distinct attentional domains, we will summarize studies showing the involvement of two oscillatory processes observed during attention deployment: power modulations mainly in the alpha band, and phase modulations in lower frequency bands. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Prediction and Attention.