“Think of it like a wake-up call,” Cohen explained. Then, they blew a puff of air on the mouse’s face, activating a “top-down” signal in which existing knowledge shapes perception of a stimuli. First, they flicked a mouse’s whisker, provoking a “bottom-up” signal that reports new sensory information. Because Cohen’s technology shines light on each neuron - like using sonar to see each fish - he can locate and analyze several at a time.Īs their optogenetic tool recorded neural signals in live mice, Cohen and his team added stimuli based on the two main types of attention. In layer one, cells are too sparse for this technique to be efficient it’s like fishing in an ocean that has just a handful of fish. Traditionally, scientists stick ultrathin glass probes into brain tissue at random, hoping to “harpoon” neurons so they can record individual signals.
“You can only see the surface because the light only goes a short way into the tissue.” Still, some scientists call layer one a “crowning mystery.” It’s notoriously difficult to study. “It’s like looking at your hand,” Cohen said. Since the optical tool uses light to record when neurons fire, they could only study this layer for now.
student in his lab, Linlin Fan, trained their tech on the top layer of the brain. “The next step is to actually do something with it,” he said, “to actually learn something about how the brain works.”įirst, a Ph.D. Recently, his lab invented technology that makes electrical impulses flowing through neurons in a live animal brain observable for the first time. Now, in a paper published in Cell, Cohen and colleagues report new evidence that could help researchers understand how the brain ignores or acts on different information, knowledge that could offer crucial data on how neuronal circuits function and, one day, help researchers understand and treat neurological disease.Ĭohen didn’t set out to investigate attention.
Your brain has to ignore all that stuff and only pay attention to the very few things that are actually relevant.” “Right now, your little toe is sending signals up to your brain, as is every square inch of your body,” said Adam Cohen, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology, and of physics, “but most of it is not interesting. Every fingernail, elbow, nostril, and eyebrow is constantly vying for the brain’s attention. Today, the internet is a sensory free-for-all: Pop-up ads burst into articles every few paragraphs, stealing the screen with lollipop colors and music, shouting product information from unseen corners.
0 kommentar(er)
