Far be it from me to question the work of neuroscientists. It’s not as though I have a working brain or something. Shouldn’t we all leave the findings of experts to experts? Then, maybe some nagging question cycles through my brain like people performing a “wave” around a stadium. Think about that.
Where else can a stadium wave go? It certainly doesn’t extend into the parking lots, city, or countryside beyond the confines of the arena of sports activity. So, in my brain some question keeps circling with more or less intensity, crests of attention and troughs of inattention. Am I supposed to be up or down? Wait. Here comes the crest. The neurons join in, section by section, resting at the bottom like the crowd taking seats in turn before jumping up again in an enthusiastic cheer.
Look to a 2016 article in Science by T. A. Engel and others who wrote “Selective modulation of cortical state during spatial attention” (Someone must have lain in a trough to miss the idiosyncratic “a” before “cortical”).* Engel and fellow researchers probed “columns of neurons” in the brains of monkeys to see how they paid attention during waves of inattentive and attentive neurons. You know what they discovered?
But before I answer, let me interrupt…
Oh! What was I writing? Yes, the researchers discovered that neurons cycle through “awake” and “sleep” stages, or focused or unfocused stages, or active and inactive stages, or…Okay, you get the point. The monkeys sometimes did and sometimes didn’t pay attention to a stimulus. And according to the online write-up about the research, “The team found that the higher and lower activity states relate to the ability to respond to the world.”**
Here comes that crest again: So, what I was saying was that even with regard to the space around us and the events in that space, we don’t always pay attention to the details. Duh!
“Not fair,” you say. "The neuroscientists demonstrated an important principle, that parts of the brain can fall at least momentarily asleep while the overall brain is awake."
You’re right. I’m glad (trough approaching) they did the…What was I saying? (Crest approaching) yes; Yes, I’m glad they did the research. No, I know that we don’t pay attention when we don’t pay attention, even if it means we don’t pay attention to our surroundings and the stimuli in them.
Is that why I have missed so many details in so many places? Back to the findings: As one of the researchers reportedly states, “There is a metabolic cost associated with neurons firing all the time.” Again, duh!
Sorry, I don’t mean to demean their research. I’m glad they could pinpoint columns of neurons and note that they sleep and wake, use more energy or less energy, and fit into an overall pattern in the brain. Now I learned…what did I learn?
Point: Sometimes we learn something very specific about what we already know; and even though it makes little difference in what we know, we never know when some part of our brain will discover something very specific that might lead to something we really don’t know. There’s an approaching wave crest. Surf ’s up.
*T. A. Engel, N. A. Steinmetz, M. A. Gieselmann, A. Thiele, T. Moore, K. Boahen. Selective modulation of cortical state during spatial attention. Science, 2016; 354 (6316): 1140 DOI:10.1126/science.aag1420
** https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161202101326.htm
Where else can a stadium wave go? It certainly doesn’t extend into the parking lots, city, or countryside beyond the confines of the arena of sports activity. So, in my brain some question keeps circling with more or less intensity, crests of attention and troughs of inattention. Am I supposed to be up or down? Wait. Here comes the crest. The neurons join in, section by section, resting at the bottom like the crowd taking seats in turn before jumping up again in an enthusiastic cheer.
Look to a 2016 article in Science by T. A. Engel and others who wrote “Selective modulation of cortical state during spatial attention” (Someone must have lain in a trough to miss the idiosyncratic “a” before “cortical”).* Engel and fellow researchers probed “columns of neurons” in the brains of monkeys to see how they paid attention during waves of inattentive and attentive neurons. You know what they discovered?
But before I answer, let me interrupt…
Oh! What was I writing? Yes, the researchers discovered that neurons cycle through “awake” and “sleep” stages, or focused or unfocused stages, or active and inactive stages, or…Okay, you get the point. The monkeys sometimes did and sometimes didn’t pay attention to a stimulus. And according to the online write-up about the research, “The team found that the higher and lower activity states relate to the ability to respond to the world.”**
Here comes that crest again: So, what I was saying was that even with regard to the space around us and the events in that space, we don’t always pay attention to the details. Duh!
“Not fair,” you say. "The neuroscientists demonstrated an important principle, that parts of the brain can fall at least momentarily asleep while the overall brain is awake."
You’re right. I’m glad (trough approaching) they did the…What was I saying? (Crest approaching) yes; Yes, I’m glad they did the research. No, I know that we don’t pay attention when we don’t pay attention, even if it means we don’t pay attention to our surroundings and the stimuli in them.
Is that why I have missed so many details in so many places? Back to the findings: As one of the researchers reportedly states, “There is a metabolic cost associated with neurons firing all the time.” Again, duh!
Sorry, I don’t mean to demean their research. I’m glad they could pinpoint columns of neurons and note that they sleep and wake, use more energy or less energy, and fit into an overall pattern in the brain. Now I learned…what did I learn?
Point: Sometimes we learn something very specific about what we already know; and even though it makes little difference in what we know, we never know when some part of our brain will discover something very specific that might lead to something we really don’t know. There’s an approaching wave crest. Surf ’s up.
*T. A. Engel, N. A. Steinmetz, M. A. Gieselmann, A. Thiele, T. Moore, K. Boahen. Selective modulation of cortical state during spatial attention. Science, 2016; 354 (6316): 1140 DOI:10.1126/science.aag1420
** https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161202101326.htm
RSS Feed