Study Provides Clues on How Humans Focus Attention

In a recent study published in the journal Neuron, researchers from Johns Hopkins University revealed some answers about how the brain makes decisions regarding where to focus its attention based on studying barn owls. Barn owls have acute hearing and sharp focus, making them good research cases for exploring spatial attention. Using a visual projector and a pair of specialized earphones, the owls were presented with a series of computer-controlled images of dots and noise bursts. Electrodes were also inserted into a portion of the owls’ brains — called the optic tectum — the key hub in the midbrain of all vertebrate animals, important for the control of spatial attention. After determining that brain cells in the tectum fired when the images and sounds appeared, the researchers then used two stimuli to measure which was more likely to dominate in the brain’s representation of the world. By using a computer model of the neurons in the tectum, researchers were able to provide an explanation for how top-down information may fine tune the ability of the brain to make decisions about where to pay attention. Learning more about how attention is controlled can help in the future treatment of such disorders like attention deficit disorder, autism and schizophrenia. To read more about this study, click here.