[visionlist] Attention and Consciousness in different senses (Frontiers Special Topic)

[Jeroen van Boxtel]

CALL FOR PAPERS
Frontiers Special Topic: "Attention and Consciousness in different  
senses”

We are pleased to announce an upcoming Special Issue on "Attention and  
Consciousness in different senses" in “Frontiers in Consciousness  
Research”, for which we are now accepting submissions.

Submitted manuscripts can range from original research to review  
articles and, if accepted, get published in a combined volume as well  
as an eBook together with contributions from other leaders in the  
field. All published works in the Special Issue are eligible for  
progressive promotion within Frontier’s unique tier system of  
scientific journals.

Frontiers Special Topics are not the same as special issues in other  
journals. Special Topics are suggested and driven by researchers and  
not by a journal's agenda. It is the research topic that is the most  
important and articles are not invited, but carefully selected from  
article proposals and get rigorously peer-reviewed before acceptance.  
Special Topics are aimed at providing an encyclopedic coverage of  
highly focused research areas. It is an opportunity for all  
researchers with an interest in Binocular Rivalry to bring attention  
on our research area.

The Special Topic on "Attention and Consciousness in different  
senses"  will be presented at a dedicated, openly accessible Homepage  
on the Frontiers website, where all articles are accumulated and  
discussions can be easily held. In future versions of Frontiers, we  
will be able to update our Special Topic, add blogs, share data,  
initiate collaborations and more. Special Topic will also be compiled  
into an eBook for widespread dissemination to promote our research  
area such as all major Foundations that fund related research,  
Frontiers' network of international journalists, and any other  
organizations of relevance.

The proposed structure of this Special Topic is provided below.


Hosting Journal: Frontiers in Consciousness Research

Topic Title: Attention and consciousness in different senses

Topic Editor(s): Jeroen van Boxtel, Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Jerome Sackur

Description: Although often used in everyday speech and in the  
scholarly literature,  “selective attention” and “consciousness” lack  
clear, undisputed definitions. Partly because of this deficit there  
exists a lively debate on the relationship between the two.  
Nevertheless, attention has been studied scientifically for a long  
time, because a variety of tasks allow researchers to control several  
of its aspects (e.g. focused and feature-based attention).

Consciousness as a scientific subject of study has emerged more  
recently, but is now rapidly gaining traction. Scientific studies of  
consciousness concern the state or level of consciousness (e.g., awake  
as opposed to in coma, dreamless sleep or under anaesthesia) as well  
as the contents of consciousness or the phenomenology of perception.

With the increase in consciousness-focused research, there is a  
concomitant  surge in research examining the relationship between  
attention and consciousness. This relationship between attention and  
consciousness is the topic of this special topic. Contributions  
related to or focused solely on attention or on consciousness will not  
be considered.

It had long been assumed that attention and consciousness are  
inextricably intertwined: two sides of the same coin. However,  
recently substantial evidence has emerged that attention and  
consciousness are interacting, but separable processes. It is however  
debated how tight the interactions are, and what the exact nature of  
the relationship is.

Therefore, we invite researchers from different “camps” to provide  
opinionated but balanced literature reviews. Different groups will  
interpret the same data in different ways. We feel that combining  
these views in one special topic is immensely valuable to researchers  
from different fields. Apart from reviews we also invite potential  
contributors to provide new and exciting evidence in the form of  
original contributions that may support any of the different views.  
Even though attention and consciousness are critical aspects of many  
different cognitive processes, they are mainly studied (though not  
exclusively) in the domain of visual perception. In other sensory  
modalities, e.g. olfaction or audition, it is currently not clear  
whether distinctions between attention and consciousness exist, which  
is even more true for other cognitive processes such as memory.  
Therefore, we specifically invite contributions covering the auditory,  
somatosensory, olfactory, and memory domain.

We ask all contributors to provide discussions on the relationship  
between attention and consciousness, and focus on (1) the influence of  
attention on sensory processing; (2) the formation of conscious  
perception, (3) the evidence for unconscious processing and its  
modulation by attention; (4) potential indications for dissociations  
between attention and consciousness (e.g. does paying attention to a  
stimulus decrease performance on e.g. a discrimination task?); (5)  
neuroimaging and neurophysiology data pertaining to these questions.

Often, one is caught in one’s own research field and lacks the time or  
the knowledge to delve into another field. This special topic should  
provide a great overview in great breadth of the current state of  
knowledge on the links between attention and consciousness, and their  
interactions, in several different sensory modalities.

All authors are required to submit brief pre-submission inquiries  
including a title and an abstract directly to one of the co-host  
editors. We would like to request submission of inquiries before July  
30, 2011 to help better organization of the special topic.

Open Access Publishing Charges:
The publishing fee for authors is discounted to €900 (from €1200) for  
regular authors and €720 (from €960) for authors that are currently  
also Frontiers Associate Editors. Frontiers also raises funds to cover  
the costs of participants from low GDP countries that can not pay the  
costs of publishing their article, so they can apply for a full or  
partial waiver.

For more information, you may refer to the Frontiers Special Topic  
page, where you can get further guidance and browse past Special Topics.
http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/SpecialTopicDetail.aspx?s=253&name=Consciousness_Research&st=357&sname=Attention_and_consciousness_in

With best regards,

Jeroen J.A. van Boxtel (j.j.a.vanboxtel at gmail.com)
Naotsugu Tsuchiya (naotsu at gmail.com)
Jerome Sackur (jerome.sackur at gmail.com)

Guest Associate Editors, Frontiers in Consciousness Research
www.frontiersin.org

Abstract Submission Deadline: Jul 30, 2011

Article Submission Deadline: Sep 15, 2011