We all have an intuitive understanding of what it means to pay attention to a particular visual scene or a conversation, and that it must be somehow related to our conscious awareness—but what exactly ...

Researchers at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain mapped hundreds of images (far left) by eye tracking (center left), "meaning" (center right) and salience or outstanding features (far left).

The visual system has limited capacity, and cannot process everything that falls onto the retina. Instead, the brain relies on attention to bring salient details into focus and filter out background ...

To a neuroscientist, the trouble with cocktail parties is not that we do not love cocktails or parties (many neuroscientists do). Instead what we call “the cocktail party problem” is the mystery of ...

New work at the University of California, Davis, shows for the first time how visual attention affects activity in specific brain cells. The paper, published June 26 in the journal Nature, shows that ...

With their massive flapping ears and long trunks, it isn't hard to believe that elephants tend to rely on acoustic and olfactory cues for communication. They use gestures and visual displays to ...

Every day, companies, products and media are competing for consumer's attention. We give it away constantly, often without realizing it. While attention is intangible and difficult to quantify, once ...

Our visual attention is drawn to parts of a scene that have meaning, rather than to those that are salient or 'stick out,' according to new research. The findings overturn the widely held model of ...

Our visual attention is drawn to parts of a scene that have meaning, rather than to those that are salient or "stick out," according to new research from the Center for Mind and Brain at the ...