Brain cells work together to pay attention
By Bruce Bower
When the brain snaps to attention, individual neurons don’t necessarily work harder, but clusters of them form cooperative units, a new study suggests.
This unifying brain process, in which nerve cells briefly align the peaks and valleys of their electrical outbursts, may underlie an animal’s shifting of attention to a particular sight, sound, or other sensation, according to a team of neuroscientists led by Peter N. Steinmetz of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.