Oscillations and synchrony in attention

Abstract

Attention is one of the most important higher cognitive processes underlying the normal functioning of the human brain. It refers to a set of neural mechanisms that govern the selection and gating of sensory events, thoughts, and actions. Although psychologists have described this concept more than 100 years ago, until recently, underlying computational mechanisms and their neurophysiological implementation remained largely unknown. Research over the past decade has seen an increase of converging evidence that human brain oscillations are intimately linked to attention. Here, we discuss how brain oscillations are related to three major components of attention that contribute to the preferential processing of behaviourally relevant sensory input: first, the selective processing of attended stimuli; second, the suppression or filtering out of irrelevant information; and third, the dynamic allocation of processing resources. Finally, we review an integrative approach towards expressing attentional influences on perception by means of brain oscillations, and link it to a recent computational model of attention.