What is attention? How does it go wrong? Do attention deficits arise from genes or from the environment? Can we cure it with drugs or training? Are there disorders of attention other than deficit disorders?

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of research on the subject of attention. This research has been facilitated by advances on several fronts: New methods are now available for viewing brain activity in real time, there is expanding information on the complexities of the biochemistry of neural activity, individual genes can be isolated and their functions identified, analysis of the...