Researchers have long sought the methods behind how the brain takes the massive data that comes in through our eyes and distills it into something digestable by the brain. The study of “attention” got a boost this week with the research of John Reynolds PhD, an associate professor in teh system Neurobilogy Lab at the Salk Institute, who has a paper published in the upcoming March 29th, 2009 issue of “Neuron”.
The strength of visual input fluctuates over orders of magnitude. The visual system reacts automatically to these changes by adjusting its sensitivity, becoming more sensitive in response to faint inputs, and reducing sensitivity to strong inputs. For example, when we walk into a darkened lecture hall on a sunny day at first we see little, but over time our visual system adapts, increasing its sensitivity to match the environment.
via Visual Attention: How The Brain Makes The Most Of The Visible World.
