By studying barn owls, scientists at Johns Hopkins University believe they've taken an important step toward solving the long-standing mystery of how the brain chooses what most deserves attention. The finding, which is the subject of the cover article of the October 30, 2018 issue of the journal Cell Reports, likely applies to all animals, including humans, and offers new insight into what goes wrong in the brain with diseases like attention-deficit disorder (ADD). The open-acces article is titled “Combinatorial Neural Inhibition for Stimulation Across Space.” "There are a million things out there in the world bombarding our eyes, our ears, our skin, and other sensory organs. Of all of those things, what particular piece of information do we most need to pay attention to at any instant to drive our behavior?" said co-author Shreesh Mysore, PhD, a Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist. "Our work provides a really beautiful answer to how the brain solves a key component of that problem." Despite studying the forebrain of animals for decades, scientists haven't found a good answer to the question of how the brain decides what to pay attention to. The researchers decided instead to look at the midbrain, an evolutionarily older part of the brain found in everything from fish and mammals to birds and humans. "All animals have a need to pay attention to the thing that might impact our survival, but we don't all have a highly developed forebrain," said Dr. Mysore, who is also an Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences.Login Or Register To Read Full Story