PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

How do we split our attention?

McGill's Cognitive Neurophysiology Lab team finds that we are natural-born multi-taskers

2011-12-22
(Press-News.org) Imagine you're a hockey goalie, and two opposing players are breaking in alone on you, passing the puck back and forth. You're aware of the linesman skating in on your left, but pay him no mind. Your focus is on the puck and the two approaching players. As the action unfolds, how is your brain processing this intense moment of "multi-tasking"? Are you splitting your focus of attention into multiple "spotlights?" Are you using one "spotlight" and switching between objects very quickly? Or are you "zooming out" the spotlight and taking it all in at once?

These are the questions Julio Martinez-Trujillo, a cognitive neurophysiology specialist from McGill University, and his team set out to answer in a new study on multifocal attention. They found that, for the first time, there's evidence that we can pay attention to more than one thing at a time.

"When we multi-task and attend to multiple objects, our visual attention has been classically described as a "zoom lens" that extend over a region of space or as a spotlight that switches from one object to the other," Martinez-Trujillo, the lead author of the study, explained. "These modes of action of attention are problematic because when zooming out attention over an entire region we include objects of interest but also distracters in between. Thus, we waste processing resources on irrelevant distracting information. And when a single spotlight jumps from one object to another, there is a limit to how fast that could go and how can the brain accommodate such a rapid switch. Importantly, if we accept that attention works as a single spotlight we may also accept that the brain has evolved to pay attention to one thing at the time and therefore multi-tasking is not an ability that naturally fits our brain architecture"

Martinez-Trujillo's approach in getting to the bottom of this long-standing controversy was novel. The team recorded the activity of single neurons in the brains of two monkeys while the animals concentrated on two objects that circumvented a third 'distracter' object. The neural recordings showed that attention can in fact, be split into two "spotlights" corresponding to the relevant objects and excluding the in-between distracter.

"One implication of these findings is that our brain has evolved to attend to more than one object in parallel, and therefore to multi-task," said Martinez-Trujillo. "Though there are limits, our brains have this ability."

The researchers also found that the split of the "spotlight" is much more efficient when the distractors are very different from the objects being attended. Going back to the very apt hockey analogy, Martinez-Trujillo explained that if a Montreal Canadiens forward is paying attention to two Boston Bruins in yellow and black, he'll have a more difficult time ignoring the linesmen, also wearing black, than if he was in a similar situation but facing two Vancouver Canucks with blue and green uniforms, easily distinguishable from the linesmen in black'.

In the next generation of experiments, the researchers will explore the limits of our ability to split attention and multi-task – looking more closely at how the similarity between objects affects multi-tasking limits and how those variables can be integrated into a quantitative model.

###This study was published this week in the journal Neuron.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Study highlights impact of sleep deprivation on patients and health care providers

2011-12-22
A new UCLA study shows that physicians who work shorter shifts are less likely to make mistakes during medical procedures. Dr. Christian De Virgilio, lead investigator at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor- UCL A Medical Center (LA BioMed), led a team that studied the medical records of 2,470 patients who had undergone laparoscopic gallbladder surgery. The study focused on operations that took place before and after rules were put in place in 2003 limiting hours worked by doctors. About half of the operations were performed before a reduction in ...

Cincinnati General Dentist Receives Award To Showcase His Dental Work

2011-12-22
Premier Cincinnati general dentist, Dr. Stuart Levy, is honored to be voted as a "Top Dentist" in Cincinnati Magazine by his peers for the third consecutive year in a row. Dr. Levy has been voted as a top dentist in Cincinnati in 2009, 2010, and 2011. "It is an honor to be voted as a top dentist in Cincinnati by my peers. Being recognized for quality dental health care is an honorable award that I truly appreciate. Each year I find myself on the list of top dentists, is a positive reassurance that I am providing the best care possible," said Dr. ...

UM researcher develops new way to assess risk for chemicals

2011-12-22
CORAL GABLES, FL – Approximately 80,000 industrial chemicals are in use and about 700 new chemicals are introduced to commerce each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. To assess human health risks from exposure to harmful substances, James Englehardt, professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Miami, is proposing a new technique that is more efficient than current methods. The new model reduces the data requirements 21-fold from previous models, and can predict the likelihood of illness not just from exposure ...

Researchers identify potential target to delay metastatic pancreatic cancer and prolong survival

2011-12-22
PHILADELPHIA -- Often, and without much warning, pancreatic cancer cells slip through the endothelial cells, head into the blood and out to other parts of the body to metastasize, making it one of the deadliest and hardest to treat cancers today. Now, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University's Center for Translational Medicine have found that reducing levels of a well-known, cell-surface protein known as N-cadherin in those cancer cells can interfere with that activity. The disruption slowed down the pancreatic cancer cells' mobility, they found, and prolonged survival ...

How the brain cell works: A dive into its inner network

How the brain cell works: A dive into its inner network
2011-12-22
CORAL GABLES, FL (December 20, 2011) – University of Miami biology professor Akira Chiba is leading a multidisciplinary team to develop the first systematic survey of protein interactions within brain cells. The team is aiming to reconstruct genome-wide in situ protein-protein interaction networks (isPIN) within the neurons of a multicellular organism. Preliminary data were presented at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting, December 3 through 7, 2011, in Denver, Colorado. "This work brings us closer to understanding the mechanics of molecules that keep ...

Virginia Beach Dentist Makings Appointment Requesting Easier Than Ever

2011-12-22
Premier Virginia Beach dentist, Dr. Christopher Hooper, extends essential features of his practice to the online community. By visiting the practice's website, patients can gain access to the convenient online appointment requesting feature. "I understand that my patients are not always able to call our office to make appointments during the day, and for that reason I am happy to offer my patients the opportunity to request appointments online. It only takes a moment to fill out the request form and submit it to our office, so our patients no longer have to worry ...

Posthumous Memoir Resonates with Occupy Wall Street Movement, Reveals Inequalities Faced by a Welfare Mother

2011-12-22
Richelene Mitchell, a single mother of seven, grapples with the humiliation of public assistance while living in a sprawling Connecticut housing project in her heart-shattering memoir, "Dear Self: A Year in the Life of a Welfare Mother". Found and published posthumously, "Dear Self" is an insightful portrait of a former member of 'the 99%' that revisits the roots of greed, corruption, and wealth inequality in America. Born the daughter of a sharecropper in the South, Richelene Mitchell struggled to make her life better. An honor student in high school, ...

Benefits of new air quality rules greatly outweigh costs

2011-12-22
A report by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health provides an expanded review of six new air quality regulations proposed or recently adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA). These include the first national standards for reducing dangerous emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants. Though the cost of implementing the new regulations is estimated to be about $195 billion over the next 20 years or so, the economic, environmental and health benefits amount to well over $1 trillion, considerably outweighing ...

PET technique promises better detection and response assessment for Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

2011-12-22
Reston, Va. – Positron emission tomography (PET) and a molecular imaging agent that captures the proliferation of cancer cells could prove to be a valuable method for imaging a form of Non-Hodgkin's disease called mantle cell lymphoma, a relatively rare and devastating blood cancer. The pilot study is published in the December issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Lymphoma is the term used for an array of cancers that affect blood cells and the lymphatic system. These cancers are typically categorized as either Hodgkin's or non-Hodgkin's. Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) ...

Sex Offender Arrested at Boy Scout Meeting

2011-12-22
Recently, a convicted sex offender was taken into custody and arrested as a result of an anonymous tip provided to the police. The man, identified as Brian Liska, was located at a Boy Scout's meeting at Irving Elementary School in Bloomington, Illinois. Liska faces Class 4 felony charges of being a child sex offender in a school zone. At the time of his arrest, Liska was reportedly wearing a Cub Scout leader uniform. Procedure necessitated the uniform being taken as evidence in the ongoing investigation resulting from the felony charges. Bloomington police spokesperson ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Even healthy children can be severely affected by RSV

Keto diet linked to reduced depression symptoms in college students

Blood test identifies HPV-associated head and neck cancers up to 10 years before symptoms

Odds of dementia strongly linked to number of co-existing mental health disorders

Large social and economic inequalities persist among UK doctors

Research reveals how microplastics threaten Gulf of Mexico marine life

AI tool developed at Oxford helps astronomers find supernovae in a sky full of noise

Hungry star is eating its cosmic twin at rate never seen before

The Age of Feasting: Late Bronze Age networks developed through massive food festivals, with animals brought from far and wide

Study of breast cell changes in motherhood provides clues to breastfeeding difficulties

Seizure spread marks loss of consciousness

Carlos Collet, MD, Ph.D., joins CRF® as director, cardiovascular imaging, physiology and translational therapeutics

Beyond weight loss: How healthy eating cuts chronic pain

Mayo Clinic physician awarded Dr. Scott C. Goodwin Grant for Adenomyosis

Kennesaw State researcher developing electronic nose to detect foodborne illness

New global database opens the door for better understanding of terrestrial ecosystem productivity

Surviving hostile Venus conditions, finding rare earths and other critical metals

New ways of producing methanol from electricity and biomass

Gemini South aids in discovery of elusive cloud-forming chemical on ancient brown dwarf

UIC researchers awarded $8.3M federal grant to study alcohol use disorder

NCCN Policy Summit explores whether artificial intelligence can transform cancer care safely and fairly

Mitcham receives funding to strengthen food as medicine pathways in southwest Virginia

PCORI awards new patient-centered CER to support informed health care decisions

Global integration of traditional and modern medicine: policy developments, regulatory frameworks, and clinical integration model

How to find a cryptic animal: Recording the elusive beaked whale in the Foz do Amazonas Basin

Long COVID and food insecurity in US adults, 2022-2023

Bariatric surgery and incident development of obesity-related comorbidities

Microbiome instability linked to poor growth in kids

Can a healthy gut microbiome help prevent childhood stunting?

Achieving low resistance and high performance in MTJs using high-entropy oxides

[Press-News.org] How do we split our attention?
McGill's Cognitive Neurophysiology Lab team finds that we are natural-born multi-taskers