EEG Correlates of Preparatory and Executive Attention during the Performance of Tasks with Various Directionalities of Attention

— EEG has been studied in the nonstationary mode of cognitive tasks. In this mode, cognitive task performance is reduced to seconds, cognitive activity is repeated many times, the stages of short-term dominance of externally oriented (sensory) attention are followed by stages of longer dominance of either sensory or internally oriented (mental) attention. Previously, the stationary mode was used, in which the subjects were for a long time either in the state of dominance of sensory attention or in the state of dominance of mental attention. The non-stationary mode is close to real learning modes, including the use of electronic education techniques. The non-stationary mode also allows the comparison of EEG correlates of mental and sensory attention dominance at different stages of cognitive task performance. An analysis of preliminary data shows that, at the stage of preparatory attention, the EEG differences between tasks with a dominance of mental attention and with a dominance of sensory attention are much smaller than the differences at the stage of executive attention, which suggests non-specificity of the nature of preparatory attention.