Integrating motivation and attention: behavioral and neural perspectives

Motivation refers to a range of urges aimed at meeting a variety of internal (e.g., physiological needs) and external (e.g., social appreciation) demands (Maslow, 1943). While motivation is known to influence cognition broadly, its direct role in the control of attention remains uncertain. For these reasons, understanding how motivational and attentional mechanisms interact to shape complex behavior represents one of the most intriguing topics in cognitive neuroscience. In this editorial, we feature a collection of recent articles addressing such interactions from complementary behavioral and neural perspectives. Together, they provide converging empirical evidence that motivational and attentional mechanisms are not separate regulatory processes. Instead, they appear deeply intertwined, jointly influencing and shaping the cognitive processes underlying goal-directed behaviors (Di Bello et al., 2019; Mogg et al., 2003).