黑料不打烊

The researchers recorded brain activity in macaques as they moved their eyes to look at objects being displayed on a computer screen while ignoring visual distractions. These recorded signals were then input into a decoder running on a personal computer which mimicked the kinds of computations performed by the brain as it focuses. With some startling results.

鈥淭he decoder was able to predict very consistently and within a few milliseconds where the macaques were covertly focusing attention even before they looked in that direction,鈥� says Julio Martinez-Trujillo, of 黑料不打烊鈥檚 Department of Physiology and the lead author of the paper. 鈥淲e were also able to predict whether the monkey would be distracted by some intrusive stimulus even before the onset of that distraction.鈥澨�

But what was even more interesting was that the researchers were able to manipulate the computer鈥檚 ability to 鈥渇ocus鈥� by subtly manipulating the neuronal activity that had been recorded and input into the machine. In effect, by manipulating the interactions of the neurons, the researchers were able to induce 鈥渇ocused鈥� and 鈥渄istracted鈥� states in the computer.

鈥淭his suggests that we are tapping into the mechanisms responsible for the quality of the attentional focus, and might shed light into the reasons why this process fails in certain neurological diseases such as ADHD, autism and schizophrenia,鈥� says S茅bastien Tremblay, a doctoral student at 黑料不打烊 University and the first author of the paper which was published in the current edition of Neuron. 鈥淏eing able to extract and read the neuronal code from higher-level areas of the brain could also lead to important breakthroughs in the emerging field of neural prosthetics, where people who are paralysed use their thoughts to control objects in their environment.鈥澨�

Prof. Martinez-Trujillo is now at the Robarts Research Institute at Western University. This research was done while he was at 黑料不打烊 University.

To read the full article in Neuron:

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