Awareness, Attention and the Detection of Novelty

Abstract

We have finished describing a series of dopamine-triggered events that together constitute a hypothesis on the molecular mechanism of attention and attention-based learning. However, attention is not an all or none process. We constantly utilize varying degrees of attention intensity to monitor and scan our external physical environment and sometimes our internal environment as well. In the case of vision, we may move our eyes in a visual saccade (a tracking motion) and perhaps even make a facilitating tum of the head to redirect our best vision toward specific locations we wish to attend to (foveal scanning). This is certainly high priority attention of the dopaminergic type we have been examining. But we also maintain a lower level of awareness for other elements in the visual scene that are not focal points of high attention. This awareness has alternatively been termed “vigilance” or “awareness” as well as other awareness-like descriptors. How might the state of awareness relate to the synchronization-based attention theory just advanced?