Neurophysical substrates of arousal and attention

The study of arousal and attention could be of prominent importance for elucidating both fundamental and practical aspects of the mind-brain puzzle. Defined as "general activation of mind" (Kahnemann in Attention and effort. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1973), or "general operation of consciousness" (Thacher and John in Functional neuroscience: foundations of cognitive processing. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, 1977), arousal can be considered as a starting point of fundamental research on consciousness. Similar role could be assigned to attention, which can be defined by substituting the attributes "general" with "focused". Concerning the practical applications, the empirically established correlation between neuronal oscillations and arousal/attention levels is widely used in research and clinics, including neurofeedback, brain-computer communication, etc. However, the neurophysical mechanism underlying this correlation is still not clear enough. In this paper, after reviewing some present classical and quantum approaches, a transition probability concept of arousal based on field-dipole quantum interactions and information entropy is elaborated. The obtained analytical expressions and numerical values correspond to classical empirical results for arousal and attention, including the characteristic frequency dependence and intervals. Simultaneously, the fundamental (substrate) role of EEG spectrum has been enlightened, whereby the attention appears to be a bridge between arousal and the content of consciousness. Finally, some clinical implications, including the brain-rate parameter as an indicator of arousal and attention levels, are provided.