Dissecting the neural substrates of spatial attention

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Effectively distributing attention in space is critical to human learning and performance. Although it is recognised that spatial attention is influenced by arousal states, we lack an understanding of the associated brain mechanisms and dynamics. This project aims to monitor changes in arousal levels (pupillometry) and discrete stages of information processing (EEG) at the millisecond level during a spatial attention task. Establishing the sensitivity of these methods to spontaneous and externally driven fluctuations of arousal is expected to yield a mechanistic account of the neural substrates of spatial attention with implications for human learning and performance, and diagnosis and treatment of attention disorders.