Executive attention is a brain network that includes the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the anterior insula and adjacent areas of the mid-prefrontal cortex and underlying striatum. In adult studies it is often activated by requiring a person to withhold a dominant response in order to perform a subdominant response (Posner & Rothbart, 2007a, 2007b). The ability to control our thoughts, feelings, and behavior develops over time and is called self-regulation. The self-regulatory view fits well with evidence of brain activation, functional and structural connectivity, and individual differences. Moreover, the self-regulatory view helps us understand how brain networks relate to important real-life functions and provides a perspective on how the shift takes place between infancy, where regulation is chiefly under the control of the caregiver, and later life, where self-control is increasingly important.

It is useful to consider three very general approaches to enhancing cognitive functions such as attention, memory, or problem solving (Tang & Posner, 2014). One is training a specific brain network by practice on a task that uses that network (Network Training). Attention and working memory have been two of the most widely used tasks for studying network training. Another approach to enhancement involves a change in brain state by use of physical exercise, meditation, drugs, or playing video games (Brain State). A third approach involves the use of external electrical or magnetic stimulation to activate or inhibit brain pathways (Brain Stimulation). Recently studies have examined these methods in combination (Daugherty et al., 2018; Ward et al., 2017). In this chapter we review examples of each approach designed to improve cognition, related criticisms, and opportunities for further research and application.

Temperament is linked to the structure and function of the nervous system and to the experience of the organism. When we measure the person’s readiness to anger, to seek reward, to focus and switch attention, etc., we are measuring temperament and these in turn are linked to brain networks. Hyperreactivity to an unexpected, novel or intense stimulus, is also a measure of temperament important in understanding the development of behavior problems in children and psychopathologies of stress and attention in adults (Rothbart, 2011; Zentner & Shiner, 2012). Studies of resting state MRI have allowed tracing humans brain changes from birth (Gao et al., 2016), allowing examination of the development of attention and other networks early in life. The advance of epigenetic studies (Meaney, 2010) has offered a framework for thinking about the how the environment and gene expression work in concert to produce the pattern of connectivity unique to the individual.

I had a role in making it possible to visualize the working of the human brain while it is engaged in thought. The development of neuroimaging has made it possible to connect the abstract mental operations or computations studied by cognitive psychology with the brain areas studied by neuroscience and helped to establish cognitive neuroscience as a field within psychology. Here, I tell the history of how my role in visualizing the human brain came about.

Vernon Mountcastle was one of the pioneers of modern brain research. His work with animals showed that the basic functional unit of the brain was the cortical column. In 1978, I read a paper of his describing attention cells in the posterior part of the parietal cortex of alert monkeys. He suggested that these attention cells might be critically involved in orienting attention toward visual events. A Tuesday night meeting of our research group was assigned to read these papers. Our group had shown that reaction time to respond to a target was enhanced when a cue directed attention to the target location. We interpreted this to mean that attention had been oriented covertly to the location of the target, without any overt change in eye position or behavior. I asked the students whether the reaction time improvements were the results of the attention cells observed by Mountcastle. I thought that if the covert shifts of attention in humans could be connected with the monkey work, it might contribute to linking cognitive psychology to brain mechanisms. I don't think there was much enthusiasm for this idea at the time. After all, the slogan in cognitive psychology was that it was about software, and what did that have to do with the parts of the brain in which cells were found in the monkey?

In 1979, I met Oscar Marin, an outstanding behavioral neurologist, at a meeting in New York City. He was about to move to Portland, Oregon, to set up a clinical and research effort at Good Samaritan Hospital, and he invited me to set up a neuropsychology laboratory in conjunction with the hospital.