The ability to anticipate and focus on the timing of upcoming sensations and actions is crucial for adaptive behaviour. Our lab has played an important role in launching the neuroscientific investigation of temporal expectations and temporal orienting of attention. Identifying the various sources of temporal expectation (as well as their interrelations and interactions with other forms of expectation) and understanding how they influence neural processing and psychological functions remain central interests in the lab. We have approached these questions using psychophysics, PET, fMRI, ERPs, EEG, MEG, microsaccades, pupillometry.

Current topics of research include:

• How temporal expectations support selective anticipation of relevant events within dynamic environments in the face of intervening distracting stimulation
• How temporal expectations support prioritisation and access to contents in working memory
• How temporal expectation is affected in Parkinson’s disease

Theoretical perspective:

• van Ede F, Nobre AC (2023) Attention in flux. Neuron, 111(7):971-86 (Review)
• Nobre AC, van Ede F (2018) Anticipated moments: temporal structure in attention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 19:34–48.  (Review)

Key empirical contributions:

• Gresch D, Boettcher SEP, van Ede F, Nobre AC (2021) Shielding working-memory representations from temporally predictable external interference. Cognition, 217:104915.
• van Ede F, Rohenkohl G, Gould I, Nobre AC (2020) Purpose-dependent consequences of temporal expectations serving perception and action. Journal of Neuroscience, 40(41):7877–86.
• Cravo AM, Rohenkohl G, Wyart V, Nobre AC (2013) Temporal expectation enhances contrast sensitivity by phase entrainment of low-frequency oscillations in visual cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 33(9):4002–10.
• Rohenkohl G, Nobre AC (2011) α-oscillations related to anticipatory attention follow temporal expectations. Journal of Neuroscience 31(40):14076–84. 
• Miniussi C, Wilding EL, Coull JT, Nobre AC (1999) Orienting attention in time. Modulation of brain potentials. Brain 122 (Pt 8):1507–18. 
• Coull JT, Nobre AC (1998) Where and when to pay attention: the neural systems for directing attention to spatial locations and to time intervals as revealed by both PET and fMRI. Journal of Neuroscience 18(18):7426–35.