In the human brain, attention focuses first on simple characteristics before focusing on details
The attention can be ephemeral, sharpened by concentration, captured or granted. Some people are generally gifted to hold attention, while others excel in hyper-fecation in certain areas. But what triggers the neuronal waterfall in our brain at the very beginning of attention, and is it the same for everyone?
Scientists from the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California in Davis have measured the brain activity of the participants simply observing colored rebound points on a screen. Their study, published in The Journal of Neuroscienceshowed a clear scheme: the attention of the brain first locked on wider characteristics, then shrunk to specific features, revealing a remarkably effective system for treating attention.
“This means that the brain’s attention mechanisms are organized in a hierarchy so that it is preparing to perceive a stimulus by narrowing the objective of our attention over time,” said the co-author of the George Mangun study, co-director of the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain, in a press release.
This could help us better understand attentive differences, such as those observed in ADHD and autism.
Measure “early attention”
The way our brain is exactly focusing on the outside world is still not entirely understood. We are first hung on a specific functionality, or do we start by noticing simple characteristics? Take a bicycle moving to you: what is your brain processing first?
To find out, the UC Davis team invited 25 adults to perform simple attention tasks. Participants have undergone electroencephalogram tests (EEG) to measure brain activity, as well as eye tracking, while paying the movement of colored points on a screen. The researchers focused on the duration of the brain to prepare to pay attention, also known as “early attention”.
The data collected were then analyzed with automatic learning software to determine whether the brain first prepared for main categories (such as color or movement) before shrinking on specific details (such as a particular color or direction of movement).
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Attention starts wide, then shrinks in milliseconds
With the help of the software, the team followed the time that the brain spent treating different characteristics. On average, it took 240 milliseconds to focus on the general characteristics of the points, against 400 milliseconds to focus on specific features.
“When the attention is directed to the color of the points in motion, it removes attention on the direction of the movement, and vice versa,” said the main author Sreenivasan Meyyappan, a scientist of the Center for Mind and Brain, in the declaration. “This wide objective of attention is then narrowed more to also delete non -relevant colors, supporting the treatment of the color or movement of specific interest.”
Mangun compared the process to navigation on an airplane: “The control systems involved in attention are first adjusting the brain, then reducing it. It is like a pilot flying an airplane to Europe, then towards the zoom end on Rotterdam and not Berlin. ”
Inform research on ADHD
“”[The] The study tells us that our brain is first preparing to concentrate attention by activating the neurons representing the large category of the planned object, then quickly refines this orientation, “said Mangun.
Research as this add to our understanding of how the brain treats information in the very first moments of attention. These ideas are particularly useful for studying conditions such as ADHD and autism, where concentration can be a challenge and could inspire future processing approaches.
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