Attention and Action Lab

The Attention and Action Lab is located in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta and is led by Dr. Anthony Singhal.

Selective attention is a critical mediator of perception and action as we interact with our environment. Understanding the neural bases of attention has been a major theme in cognitive neuroscience, and it remains important to elucidate how various neural attention systems interact and shape our multisensory abilities to control performance. Our recent work has investigated the nature of cross-modal attention during multitasking and workload, showing early links between attention and memory for spatial processing as well as controlled and automatic attentional influences on various types of actions including driving. We are also examining interactions between emotion circuits in the brain and those underlying attentional control to further understand maladaptive behavior in patients suffering from affective disorders. In my lab we use several cognitive neuroscience techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).