The 2nd annual Interdisciplinary Approach to
Philosophical & Psychological Issues Conference

"Event-related Potentials Index Aspects of Attention: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective"
Jack Shelley-Tremblay
University of South Alabama

Event-related potentials (ERPs) reflect the summed voltages of populations of cortical neurons time-locked to a stimulus, as recorded from sensors placed over the scalp. ERPs offer the ability to supplement behavioral and introspective self-report data about conscious experience. The power of this method will be discussed using examples from ERP investigations of the Stroop effect, color-cued selective attention, the learning of novel vocabulary, and a new lie-detection paradigm. In every case, ERPs reveal the micro time course of the development of attentional deployment to both external and internal stimuli.