Long-range and local circuits for top-down modulation of visual cortex processing

Abstract

You only see what you want to see We often focus on a particular item out of a thousand objects in a visual scene. This ability is called selective attention. Selective attention enhances the responses of sensory nerve cells to whatever is being observed and dampens responses to any distractions. Zhang et al. identified a region of the mouse forebrain that modulates responses in the visual cortex. This modulation improved the mouse's performance in a visual task. Science , this issue p. 660