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When acting in a complex visual environment, it is essential to be able to flexibly allocate attention to parts of the visual scene that may contain goal-relevant information. The paper by Jia et al. provides novel evidence that our brains sequentially sample different objects in a visual scene. The results were obtained using "temporal response functions," in which unique electroencephalographic (EEG) signals corresponding to the processing of 2 continuously presented objects were isolated in an object-specific way. These response functions were dominated by 10-Hz alpha-band activity. Crucially, the different objects were sequentially sampled at a rate of about 2 Hz. These findings provide important neurophysiological insights into how our visual system operates in complex environments.

Original publication

DOI

10.1371/journal.pbio.2003230

Type

Journal article

Journal

PLoS Biol

Publication Date

07/2017

Volume

15

Keywords

Attention, Electroencephalography, Humans, Neurons, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Temporal Lobe, Time Factors, Vision, Binocular, Visual Cortex, Visual Pathways