Why a football game is decided in the brain

Göttingen researchers have clarified how the brain can simultaneously focus on different objects without being distracted by irrelevant information.

Xavi plays the ball to Andrés Iniesta, who can once precise him bounce and is equal to the leather at Xabi Alonso. As if they were ball magnets gyroscopes midfielders of the Spanish national football team on the pitch, always the ball and the players in mind. Opponents lawn afterwards as helpless extras. Göttingen neuroscientists have discovered how the human brain makes -football the Spanish European Champion possible by distributing visual attention, for example, this "tiki taka".

Visual Attention scientists call the ability to focus on sensory information that are important for our actions. Often, there are several things that we need to consider at the same time as the European champions Spain in their short passing game just ball and players. How this is achieved, even if unimportant objects might distract us, was unclear. A research team led by Stefan loyalty from the German Primate Center (DPZ) in Göttingen has found together with colleagues from McGill University in Montreal in a study of rhesus monkeys: The brain is capable of using attention as a kind of twin headlights, the same individual spots relevant to the objects place and the unimportant in the dark let (neuron, 10.1016 / j.neuron.2011.10.013).

When we observe an object, so the neurons in the brain are active, who are responsible for this part of the visual field. Sometimes, however, we must simultaneously focus on several objects at different spatial positions, between which also often are irrelevant things still for us us. There were several scientific theories, how this might work. It could be that the focus of attention spatially distributed and the disturbance factors fades between. Another possibility would be that the "spotlight of attention" is as wide fan out to detect all relevant objects, but also the unimportant things in between. It is also conceivable that the attention headlights quickly switch between the various acclaimed objects back and forth.

To explain how our brains deal with this difficult situation, the DPZ researchers and their Canadian counterparts have the activity of individual neurons in charge of seeing part of the brain measured. The investigations found at two on a visual task trained rhesus monkeys instead. The animals had successfully learned to observe on a monitor two important objects for them, between which there was an unimportant Störreiz. It was found that the nerve cells of the monkeys reacted increasingly on the two respected properties and the interference caused only a weak response. The brain can thus split the visual attention in space and in between ignore lying areas. "Our results demonstrate the wide adaptability of the brain that allows us to optimally deal with many different situations. This multi-tasking allows us simultaneously several things to consider, "said Stefan Treue, director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the German Primate Center. The flexibility of our attention system is therefore a prerequisite for people to be almost infallible Footballartists, but also that we can move safely in traffic.

original publication

Robert Niebergall, Paul S. Khayat, Stefan loyalty, Julio C. Martinez- Trujillo (2011): Multifocal attention filters out targets from distractors within and beyond primates MT neurons receptive field boundaries. Neuron, Volume 72, Issue 6, 1067-1079, 22 2011 December. doi: 10.1016 / j.neuron.2011.10.013

Source: Göttingen [Leibniz Institute for Primatenforschun]