In spite of a barrage of visual information, the brain is able to focus only on important and relevant items? A unique population of shifting neurons in the brain helps it do so, says a study.
The neurons shift in sensitivity toward different colours and directions depending on what is being attended, the findings showed.
“Most of the objects in any given visual scene are not that important, so how does the brain select or attend to important ones?” said study senior author David Freedman, an associate professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago in the US.
“We have zeroed in on an area of the brain that appears central to this process. It does this in a very flexible way, changing moment by moment depending on what is being looked for,” Freedman explained.
The researchers studied the response of individual neurons during a simple task.
They looked at neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), a region highly interconnected with brain areas involved in vision, motor control and cognitive functions.
