ACTION-BASED MECHANISMS OF ATTENTION

Actions, which have effects in the external world, must be spatiotopic ally represented in the brain. The brain is capable of representing sp ace in many different forms (e.g. retinotopic-, environment-, head- or shoulder-centred), but we maintain that actions are represented in ac tion-centred space, meaning that, at the cellular level, the direction of movement is defined by the activity of cells. In reaching, for exa mple, object location is defined as the direction and distance between the origin of the hand and the target. Most importantly, we argue tha t more than one task-relevant action can be evoked at any moment in ti me. Therefore, highly efficient selection processes that accurately li nk vision and action have had to evolve. Research is reviewed which su pports the notion of action-based inhibitory mechanisms that select th e target from competing distracters.