Go with the flow: Multimodal brain research on communication in the vision-attention network

Imagine yourself at a crowded train station, trying to find one of your friends. Hundreds of people are passing by, and several trains are coming in and out of the station. In such an overcrowded environment, it is impossible to simultaneously process all visual stimuli in full detail. To find your friend, you can scan the environment by focussing on consecutive locations in space. How does your brain accomplish that? This thesis investigated how different brain regions communicate with one another using brain waves, to allow you to shift attention through visual space. Using a combination of brain stimulation and neuroimaging methods, this thesis highlighted the interactions between brain areas responsible for vision and attention. Understanding how attention is accomplished by the healthy human brain can help us understand what might go wrong in attention disorders, and may ultimately guide us towards novel treatment strategies to improve attention.