Humans fluidly move attention across the temporal domain rapidly shifting from the present state to past or future mental representations. This capacity is lost after lateral prefrontal damage leaving a patient with profound difficulties in goal directed behavior. Electrophysiological, neuropsychological, fMRI and electrocorticographic data support a critical role of lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the control of both voluntary and involuntary attention. PFC supports top-down control of posterior association cortex during voluntary attention in the initial 100-800 msec of stimulus processing. Automatic attention allocation indexed by response to novel environmental events is also dependent on a rapidly habituating prefrontal-hippocampal network. PFC initiates this involuntary novelty detection network within 150 msec of presentation of a novel event. Recent evidence from direct cortical recording in neurosurgical patients provides evidence that voluntary and involuntary attention are supported by ultra-high frequency gamma bursting (70-250 Hz) in the human neocortex. Thus, the devastating human prefrontal syndrome can be viewed as a failure in rapid PFC control of multiple, parallel neural networks subserving both voluntary and automatic attention which are dependent on high frequency oscillations in the neocortex.