Attention

Cellular mechanisms for attention in the brain found

July 31, 2013

A word cloud (“wordle”) created using keywords from Briggs, Mangun and Usrey “Attention Enhances Synaptic Efficacy and Signal-to-Noise in Neural Circuits” and shaped to an outline of an MRI of a human brain. Wordle creation assisted by Tagxedo.com. (Credit: Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth)

The ability to pay attention to relevant information while ignoring distractions is a core brain function. Without the ability to focus and filter out “noise,” we could not effectively interact with our environment.

But despite much study of attention in the brain, the cellular mechanisms responsible for the effects of attention have remained a mystery.

Researchers from Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the University of California Davis studiedcommunications between synaptically connected neurons under conditions where subjects shifted their attention toward or away from visual stimuli that activated the recorded neurons./.../