These findings are a major discovery and will guide future research into both visual and attention deficit disorders.

If you are looking for a particular object on a desk – say a yellow pencil amongst a group of colored pencil – how exactly does your brain work to visually locate it?

For the first time, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) neuroscientists has identified how different parts of the brain determine what to visually pay attention to and what to ignore. This finding is a major discovery for visual cognition and will guide future research into both visual and attention deficit disorders.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used various brain imaging techniques to show exactly how specific parts of the brain (known as the visual cortex and parietal cortex) directly send information to each other through white matter connections in order to specifically pick out the information that you want to see.

“We have demonstrated that attention is a process in which there is one-to-one mapping between the first place visual information comes from the eyes into the brain and beyond to other parts of the brain,” said Adam Greenberg, postdoctoral fellow at CMU’ s Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.

“With so much information in the visual world, it’s dramatic to think that you have an entire system behind knowing what to pay attention to,” said Marlene Behrmann, professor of psychology at CMU. Dr. Behrmann is a renowned expert in using brain imaging to study the visual perception system. “The mechanisms show that you can actually drive the visual system – you are guiding your own sensory system in an intelligent and smart fashion that helps facilitate your actions in the world.”

For the study, the researchers used several different brain scans to identify regions in the brain responsible for visual processing and attention. From this, they found the specific regions involved were the visual and parietal cortex. Further, they found both regions of the brain “talked” to each other through direct connections.  The researchers used a technique called “Diffusion Spectrum Imaging,” which allows an extremely detailed estimate of these hard-wired connections between brain regions.

As we learn anything, our brain matter adjusts accordingly. New connections are established and persist. “Because we know that training can alter white matter, it might be possible, through training, that the ability to filter out irrelevant or unwanted information could be improved,” Greenberg said.

This could eventually lead to a more complete understanding of disorders like ADHD and ultimately better treatments.

February 25, 2012
The Healthy Mind Network 

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