Time is a primordial dimension of cognition and plays a fundamental role in guiding attention. Yet, the study of temporal attention has lagged considerably behind that of its spatial counterpart.
We have shown that humans extract various types of temporal regularities embedded in the environment and use these to focus on events in time. The brain is sensitive to the specific interval between two events (temporal associations), consistent repeating intervals across many events (rhythms), repeating patterns of varied intervals across events (sequences), and changing likelihoods of events over time (probabilities). Predictable temporal patterns can be complex and be abstracted among other, temporally unpredictable events. Different types of temporal regularities can co-exist and used together to focus attention.
Our current work on temporal attention asks:
- (How) do temporal expectations at different timescales work together to guide attention?
- How do temporal expectations depend on other attributes (e.g., space, action, or non-spatial features) to guide attention?
- What brain areas and systems coordinate temporal selective attention for different purposes?
If you are interested in temporal attention, check out our review papers.
- Nobre AC, van Ede F (2023) Attention in Flux. Neuron, 111(7):971-986 (Review)
- Shalev N, Bauer A-KR, Nobre AC (2019) The tempos of performance. Current Opinion in Psychology 29: 254–60
- Nobre AC, van Ede F (2018) Anticipated moments: temporal structure in attention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 19:34–48 (Review)
- Nobre AC, Heideman SG (2015) Temporal orienting of attention. In: JM Fawcett, EF Risko, A Kingstone, editors. The Handbook of Attention (pp. 57–78). Cambridge: MIT Press
- Muller T, Nobre AC (2014) Perceiving the passage of time: neural possibilities. Annals of the New York Academy of Science 1326(1):60–71
- Nobre AC, Rohenkohl G (2014) Time for the fourth dimension in attention. In: AC Nobre & S Kastner, editors. The Oxford Handbook of Attention (pp. 676–721) Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Nobre AC (2010) How can temporal expectations bias perception and action? In AC Nobre & JT Coull (Eds) Attention & Time (pp. 371–392) Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Coull J, Nobre A (2008) Dissociating explicit timing from temporal expectation with fMRI. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 18(2):137–44
- Nobre AC, Correa A, Coull J (2007) The hazards of time. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 17(4):465–70
- Nobre AC (2001) Orienting attention to instants in time. Neuropsychologia 39(12):1317–28