Temporal orienting of attention

Intuition suggests that knowing when something is going to happen helps one to focus his resources at that expected point in time and enhance his behavior. Recent experiments have validated this notion, and have begun to reveal the neural systems and mechanisms involved in the temporal orienting of attention. These studies indicate that people are able to use time information flexibly to orient attention selectively to different time intervals. This is achieved via a left-hemisphere weighted parietal-frontal system. Temporal orienting capitalizes on modulation of motor-related mechanisms. Temporal orienting, when contrasted to spatial orienting, illustrates the flexibility of attentional functions in the human brain. Furthermore, undetected effects of temporal expectancies may be pervasive in behavioral and neuro-scientific experiments. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.