This course will provide students with a state-of-the-art introduction to the neural mechanisms of attention and prediction. Evidence from human behavioural, neuroimaging, and patient studies, as well as animal neurophysiology will be presented and discussed. At the end of the course, students will be able to (1) describe key empirical findings in the cognitive neuroscience of attention and prediction, (2) analyse and compare current theories of attention and prediction, and (3) evaluate the theories in the light of the key findings or new predictions.

Neurobiological aspects. The course will provide a detailed overview of the neurobiological basis of attention and prediction, including the cortical and subcortical structures underlying attentional orienting and visual search, oscillatory signatures of attention, and attention- and expectation-related modulations in sensory cortices.
 
Functional aspects. The course will address functional aspects of attention, prediction, and related processes, including internal vs external attention, bottom-up vs top-down attention, object- and feature-based attention, visual search, perceptual decision making, and consciousness.
 
Theoretical aspects. The course will address core theories of attention, prediction, and decision making, including biased competition theory, attentional engagement theory, guided search theory, feature integration theory, interhemispheric competition theory, drift diffusion models, the communication-through-coherence hypothesis, and the predictive brain hypothesis.
 
Additional aspects. We will discuss evidence from response times and their distributions, performance errors, eye-tracking, lesion-deficit analysis, animal neurophysiology, and human imaging (EEG, MEG, fMRI, and TMS). Where relevant, implications of theories, models, and empirical findings for applied and clinical research issues will be discussed.
 

• Group assignment during the course, including presentation [formative: pass/fail]
• Written exam [summative: graded] 100%