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visual attention

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·September 23, 2025·6 min read

Brain Reveals Attention Works Like a Zoom Lens

A new study shows that our brain’s attention system first prepares broadly, then zooms in on specific details within fractions of a second. Using EEG and machine learning, researchers tracked how people focused on either the color or movement of dots before they appeared.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·May 2, 2024·6 min read

Brainstem Plays Vital Role in Visual Attention

Researchers highlights the locus coeruleus (LC), a small brainstem region, as critical in enhancing visual sensory processing through its production of norepinephrine. In the study scientists used optogenetics to activate these specific neurons in non-human primates, significantly improving their performance in a visual attention task.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·March 26, 2024·5 min read

Unlocking the Brain’s Attention Network

Researchers have utilized depth electrodes in epilepsy patients to study exogenous attention, the involuntary shift of focus triggered by external stimuli. This unique approach, capturing neural activity across 1,400 brain regions, reveals how attention develops from visual processing to action response, involving a continuum of cortical networks.

This shows three people playing soccer with a line from the central woman pointing to a ball, and one pointing to another player

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Visual Neuroscience

·March 25, 2022·5 min read

Attention to Objects in Peripheral Vision Is Not Driven by Tiny Eye Movements

While microsaccades appear to boost or diminish the strength of brain signals associated with attention, eye movements are not drivers for these brain signals.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·January 31, 2022·4 min read

“Do You See What I See?” Study Shows Cross-Cultural Variation in Maternal Focus During Parent-Child Interactions

Study sheds new light on the roles of social interactions and cultural diversity in the development of attention.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Visual Neuroscience

·April 10, 2020·5 min read

Video games improve the visual attention of expert players

If you're playing video games to help kill time during social distancing, you might be improving your visual attention abilities. Researchers found experienced gamers have faster information processing abilities and can allocate more cognitive power to individual visual stimuli. Playing video games can cause long-term changes in the brain and lead to improvements in temporal visual selective attention.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·September 25, 2017·4 min read

Visual Brain Drawn to Meaning, Not What Stands Out

Researchers report our visual attention pays most attention to parts of a scene that have meaning to us, not the parts that stick out.

Image shows a woman looking to the left.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Visual Neuroscience

·July 5, 2017·3 min read

Gaze Direction Affects Sound Sensitivity

A new study reports that listening to something while looking in a different direction may slow reaction times and increase the effort for auditory attention.