All parts of the brain › Attention

What part of the brain controls attention?

No single part: two layers work together. Staying awake and alert (arousal) comes from the reticular activating system, a network of nuclei in the brainstem whose signals, partly relayed by the thalamus, keep the cortex switched on. Choosing what to attend to is done in the cortex: a parietal–frontal network steers focus on purpose, a mostly right-sided one pulls it to anything sudden, and the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex keep it on a goal. [1][2][3][4]

Not lit: the reticular formation, a net-like web of nuclei running through the core of the midbrain, pons and medulla, and the locus coeruleus, a small noradrenaline-making nucleus in the pons that is part of the arousal system. They are a network and a nucleus inside the brainstem, not a separate shape in this atlas (BodyParts3D), so the whole brainstem is lit and no marker is placed at a guessed position. [5][6]

The 3D brain needs JavaScript. The list of parts still says what each one does for attention.

Slice

All 5 parts are lit together. Drag to turn, pinch or scroll to zoom, tap a part on the brain or a name in the list to focus it; .

Attention: 5 parts lit

Brainstem, thalamus, prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe and cingulate gyrus. Tap one to see where it is and what it does.

The parts and their roles

Houses the reticular formation and the arousal nuclei of the ascending reticular activating system (noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus, serotonin from the raphe nuclei, acetylcholine from the pedunculopontine and laterodorsal tegmental nuclei), whose projections keep the thalamus and cortex awake and responsive. [1][5][6] Where is the brainstem?
Relays the brainstem’s arousal signals to the cortex through its intralaminar nuclei; its pulvinar takes part in shifting visual attention, and its thin reticular nucleus can damp or pass the traffic between thalamus and cortex, the basis of Francis Crick’s 1984 “searchlight” idea of attention. [7][8][9] Where is the thalamus?
Gives top-down control: it holds the current goal in working memory and biases processing elsewhere in the brain toward what is relevant to it, which is how you keep focus on one voice or one task among distractions. [10][11] Where is the prefrontal cortex?
Maps where things are and steers attention through space: the intraparietal sulcus and superior parietal lobule are core nodes of the dorsal attention network, and the right temporoparietal junction belongs to the ventral network that reorients you to unexpected events. [2][3][12] Where is the parietal lobe?
Its front part, the anterior cingulate cortex, monitors for conflict and errors, for example when the word “red” is printed in blue ink in the Stroop task, and signals when more control is needed. [13][14] Where is the cingulate gyrus?

How they work together

Michael Posner’s widely used model splits attention into three networks: alerting (reaching and keeping a ready state, tied to noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus), orienting (selecting a place or item, tied to parietal and frontal eye-field areas) and executive control (resolving conflict, tied to the anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal cortex). [4][6]
Attention can be pulled or pushed: a sudden flash or loud noise captures it from the bottom up through the ventral network, while deciding to look for a friend in a crowd directs it from the top down through the dorsal network; the two interact all the time. [2][3]
You can attend to a place without moving your eyes (covert attention), yet the systems for shifting attention and for moving the eyes overlap heavily: the frontal eye fields and parietal areas take part in both, and the midbrain’s superior colliculus helps orient the eyes and head. [4][15][16]
Honest limit: attention networks are found with imaging and recordings as patterns across many regions, and the model’s pieces are much larger than the areas involved, so whole lobes and gyri light; the reticular formation, the locus coeruleus, the frontal eye fields and the temporoparietal junction have no shape of their own here, and the boundaries between alerting, orienting and control are a working model rather than fixed anatomy. [4][5]

Attention and sleep share the same arousal machinery: the brainstem’s reticular activating system that keeps you alert is the side of the hypothalamus’s sleep switch that gets shut off when you fall asleep. [1][17] What part of the brain controls sleep?

Sources

Facts describe anatomy and normal function only. A part lit here takes part in attention; it does not do it alone, and it does other jobs too. The 3D model is the adult male BodyParts3D brain (credits and licence); on it the brainstem includes the midbrain, pons and medulla, so lighting the brainstem lights all three.