( ctively to sounds that came from the sa...)Stanford study of owls finds link in brain between sight and sound

Selecting certain kinds of information to be processed, while ignoring others, is the root of attention. What was previously known about the mechanism of attention was based on research done by other scientists - including assistant professor of neurobiology Tirin Moore, PhD - who have looked at how monkeys focus their attention on things they see. These researchers have found that when a monkey decides to turn its eyes, the regions of the brain that process visual information increase their responses to objects that the monkey is about to look at and decrease their responses to all other objects in the world.

Finding that auditory responses can be regulated by the circuits that control gaze in barn owls suggests that the brain uses a common strategy to focus attention that spans different types of animals and different parts of the brain.

"This paper opens the floodgates for studying a wide range of species," Knudsen said. "The fundamental mechanisms are probably going to be the same in all vertebrates, as even frogs and fish have gaze control." All animals have to be able to attend to certain stimuli and ignore others.

"Now that we have found that the principle applies in owls as well as monkeys, we can figure out the mechanisms of how the brain manages attention," said Winkowski. In owls, the circuits being examined are amenable to manipulations that will allow researchers to determine what mechanisms are involved and which neurotransmitters and neurotransmitter receptors are used in signaling attention.

"Relatively nothing is known about how the brain increases and decreases signaling," Winkowski said. "We want to discover the cellular mechanisms of how attention works."

"Once we learn the circuitry for attention, we
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Source:Stanford University Medical Center