Development of brain networks for orienting to novelty

Among the many contributions of I.P. Pavlov to the study of the higher nervous system was his exploration of the physical basis of attention. Pavlov's analysis of the orienting reflex (OR), together with the contributions of Y.N. Sokolov, demonstrated that attention could be studies by the objective methods of neurophysiology. Cognitive neuroscience has continued these effort by using neuroimaging to explore the anatomy and physiology of attention in the working human brain. It is now possible to show that the appearance of a novel visual event invokes multiple attentional networks that work in concert to orient to and process a novel object within a very brief exposure. In this paper, we describe cognitive studies of orienting to novelty in adults, examine the networks of neural areas involved in processing novel objects, and review the development in early life of these attentional networks. Orienting to novelty provides an excellent vehicle for examining how biology and experience shape the mechanisms of self-regulation and cognitive control.