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Modifying Brain Networks 403Table 18-1 Brain Areas and Neuromodulators Involved in AttentionNetworksfunction structures modulatorOrient Superior parietal AcetylcholineTemporal parietal junctionFrontal eye fieldsSuperior colliculusAlert Locus Coeruleus NorepinephrineRight frontal and parietalcortexExecutive Attention Anterior cingulate DopamineLateral ventral prefrontalBasal gangliatargets at the cued location (spatial cue condition) from trials using a central cuegives a measure of orienting, because the spatial cue, but not the central cue, providesvalid information on where a target will occur.In previous work, we found that children work best when their actions are relatedto a story and when there is clear feedback on their performance (Berger,Jones, Rothbart, & Posner, 2000). In the child version of the ANT (see figure 18-1), five colorful fish replace the arrows that typically appear in the adult flankertask. Children are invited to “make the middle fish happy” or “feed the middlefish” by pressing a button corresponding to the direction in which it is pointing.Visual feedback (the middle fish smiles and bubbles come out of its mouth) andauditory feedback (a “Woohoo!” sound) is provided when the response has beensuccessful.The ANT has some useful properties as a measure of attentional efficiency. Itdoes not use language stimuli, so it can be used with children, speakers of anylanguage, patients unable to read, and other special populations. The test provideswithin 20 minutes a measure of the efficiency of the alerting, orienting, and conflictnetworks, in addition to the overall RT and error rate. Using the adult ANTwith a sample of 40 normal adults, the network efficiency scores were found tobe reliable over two successive presentations (Fan et al., 2002). In addition, thescores provided by the task are independent, as no correlation was found amongthem.Using the Child ANT, the developmental course of the attentional networks from4 years of age to adulthood has been studied (Rueda et al., 2004a; Rueda, Posner,& Rothbart, 2005). Despite a steady decline in overall reaction time from 4 yearsof age to adulthood, each network also showed a different developmental course.Significant improvement in conflict resolution was found up until age 7, but aremarkable stability in both RT and accuracy of conflict scores was found from