Update on our special issue of Cortex: “Cognitive and Motor Processes in Visuospatial Attention”

I’m delighted to say that, despite the challenges of coronavirus, 12 excellent papers have been published as part of our special issue of Cortex “Cognitive and Motor Processes in Visuospatial Attention”. Some of these papers draw on the work presented at our 2019 workshop, but there are also many excellent contributions from other scholars. The range and quality of the work is a testament to the resilience of all the contributors in the face of the huge challenges we faced during the last year, and we’re also very grateful to the many reviewers who made time in their packed schedules to provide thoughtful and constructive reviews.  Many of the articles are available open access, as are the vast majority of the data, so you can even have a rummage around the raw data if you feel so inclined!

The articles fall into several broad categories. There are theoretical viewpoints papers from Olivers & Roelfsema on “Attention for action in visual working memory“, Tsotsos & colleagues on “On the control of attentional processes in vision“, and Redden, MacInnes and Klein on “Inhibition of return: An information processing theory of its natures and significance“. Neuroimaging papers explore the “Modulation of anticipatory visuospatial attention in sustained and transient tasks” (Di Russo et al.,) and demonstrate the existence of “Distinct saccade planning and endogenous visuospatial attention maps in parietal cortex: A basis for functional differences in sensory and motor attention” (Huddlestone and colleagues). Neuropsychological studies give new insight into the links between attention and motor control in a diverse range of disorders, including work on Optic Ataxia by Aguilar-Ros et al., Complex Regional Pain Syndrome by Ten Brink & colleagues, Developmental Coordination Disorder by Buckingham, Arthur & Harris,  my own work with Soazig on Spatial attention and spatial short term memory in PSP and Parkinson’s disease, and Thomas and Karin’s paper on rehabilitation of Neglect . Experimental work is also well represented with papers by Kreyenmeier, Deubel and Hanning on “Theory of visual attention (TVA) in action: Assessing premotor attention in simultaneous eye-hand movements” and Aziz and colleagues on “Role of aging and working memory in performance on a naturalistic visual search task“. There are more papers in the pipeline and an editorial is on the way too, so keep an eye on our SI page!

Finally, I’d like to say a big thank you to Prof Sergio Della Salla, the EiC of Cortex, for giving us the chance to edit our own special issue, and Cheryl Philips for her invaluable assistance with the editorial process.

Dan

 

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