Tuning in to World Events

The chapter introduces one of the two major hypotheses in Dynamic Attending Theory (DAT). This is the general attending hypothesis, which maintains that attending to an external event is governed by cortical oscillation(s) involuntarily phase entrained to an event (exogenous entrainment). Selective attending is specifically linked to timed amplitude elevations of exogenously driven oscillations. Voluntary attending can also contribute to momentary attending via selective amplitude elevation of this driven rhythm’s oscillation. Other important topics introduced in this chapter involve phase response curves, which describe driving–driven entrainment, and attending energy curves, which describe allocations of heightened attending energy that figure in expectancy and capture curves of attending. Both regularity and force of the external driving rhythm figure in its entraining potential are described according to the general attending hypothesis.