Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention

Michael I. Posner, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon and Adjunct Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, where he served as founding director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology. Dr. Posner is well known for his work with Marcus Raichle on imaging the human brain during cognitive tasks; the book Images of Mind resulted from that collaboration. He has worked on the anatomy, circuitry, development, and genetics of three attentional networks underlying maintaining alertness, orienting to sensory events, and voluntary control of thoughts and ideas. Dr. Posner’s methods for measuring these networks have been applied to a wide range of neurological, psychiatric, and developmental disorders. His research on the training of attention in young children and adults to understand the interaction of specific experience and genes in shaping attention is described in Educating the Human Brain, coauthored with Mary K. Rothbart. Dr. Posner has received numerous awards, including seven honorary degrees, election to the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and the National Medal of Science.