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The CODAM network was designed in the late 1990s (Taylor JG. Race for consciousness. Bradford Book, Cambridge, MA, 1999; Taylor JG. Soc Neurosci Abstr 26:2231#839.3, 2000) so as to bring attention into the modern engineering control domain by updating it beyond ballistic control by the introduction of further components, such as by the presence of a predictor or forward model and of an error corrector. It also possesses a working memory module to hold the amplified input representing the attended stimulus so as to allow it to be available for general report around the brain for further processing. Such a process of singling out a stimulus for further work is the essence of attention acting as a filter. In a complex environment, with many distracters, such a filtering action is crucial to simplify the "world in the head" so allowing it to be used in an efficient manner at a higher level. Thus attention can be seen as a way to achieve simplified conscious report, without having to go through a possibly long list of external but unimportant stimuli for any task at hand.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-7645-6_6

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