Have you ever walked into a crowded room and been unable to see a friend standing right in front of you?
 
New research from MIT suggests “when we look for something in our environment, our attention scans one thing at a time, using a serial as opposed to a parallel process.”(Buschman, Miller) This means that in a crowded room or atmosphere, we are not always going to be the initial center of attention for our spouses and friends, instead we have to wait our turns as their brains process familiarity and finally settle on the face with features that are recognizable. And, in turn they have to wait for us to recognize them as we simultaneously scan the room, pausing briefly on one face at a time. But, what controls this rate of recognition? By studying monkey brains, scientists Miller and Buschman at MIT found that visually our brain waves “act like a built-in clock that times the shifts of attention from one position to the next”(Buschman, Miller)  making sure that our visual attention moves at a rate of 25 times a second and does not go to waste before we reach an important discovery.
 
What does this mean for other areas of the brain? By analyzing the timing of the proverbial visual shifting attention clock (our brain waves) scientists may be able to further our understanding of how we process across other regions of the brain. It is their hope that brain waves act as a general metronome for the brain, ensuring that all of our processes are kept in synch, in step with each other and dancing to the right music. Bringing us closer to improving our understanding of conditions like attention deficit disorder, and perhaps even towards finding ways to increase the rate of cognition in the brain.


"Serial, Covert Shifts of Attention during Visual Search Are Reflected by the Frontal Eye Fields and Correlated with Population Oscillations."
Timothy J. Buschman, Earl K. Miller.
Neuron, 63(3) pp. 386 - 396, 13 August 2009.