{"id":100501,"date":"2020-01-04T21:02:48","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T05:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/a-surprising-new-source-of-attention-in-the-brain-raises-new-questions"},"modified":"2020-01-04T21:02:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T05:02:48","slug":"a-surprising-new-source-of-attention-in-the-brain-raises-new-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/a-surprising-new-source-of-attention-in-the-brain-raises-new-questions","title":{"rendered":"A Surprising New Source of Attention in the Brain Raises New Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-surprising-new-source-of-attention-in-the-brain-raises-new-questions2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you read this line, you\u2019re bringing each word into clear view for a brief moment while blurring out the rest, perhaps even ignoring the roar of a leaf blower outside. It may seem like a trivial skill, but it\u2019s actually fundamental to almost everything we do. If the brain weren\u2019t able to pick and choose what portion of the incoming flood of sensory information should get premium processing, the world would look like utter chaos\u2014an incomprehensible soup of attention-hijacking sounds and sights.<\/p>\n<p>Meticulous research over decades has found that the control of this vital ability, called selective attention, belongs to a handful of areas in the brain\u2019s parietal and frontal lobes. Now a new study suggests that another area in an unlikely location\u2014the temporal lobe\u2014also steers the spotlight of attention.<\/p>\n<p>The unexpected addition raises new questions in what has long been considered a settled scientific field. \u201cThe last time an attention controlling area was discovered was 30 years ago,\u201d says Winrich Freiwald, head of Rockefeller\u2019s Laboratory of Neural Systems, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/116\/47\/23797\">published the findings<\/a> in the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em> on November 4, 2019, \u201cThis is a fundamental discovery that might require a rethinking of old concepts about attentional control.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you read this line, you\u2019re bringing each word into clear view for a brief moment while blurring out the rest, perhaps even ignoring the roar of a leaf blower outside. It may seem like a trivial skill, but it\u2019s actually fundamental to almost everything we do. If the brain weren\u2019t able to pick and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}