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The Attention Span of a Fly
Bruno van Swinderen
volume 1 | issue 3
May/June 2007Pages: 187 - 189
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Evidence for selective attention in animals depends in part on the observation that brain responses are associated with a salient stimulus and suppressed for competing stimuli. However, salience is dynamic, and a previously unattended stimulus may in turn become salient after a period of time. Thus, a second feature of selective attention is that it is characterized by a measurable tempo of alternating responsiveness among competing percepts. Previous analyses of attention-like responses to visual novelty in the Drosophila brain are extended here to address alternating attention between ongoing, competing visual stimuli. A simple method for identifying and quantifying such ongoing attention-like states is outlined, and analysis of data from wild-type and dunce animals revealed a distinct temporal structure of alternations (an attention span) in these strains. In addition to providing insight into attention-like states of Drosophila variants, this method can also be applied to other insects to infer alternation dynamics in a variety of brains.
Authors
Bruno van Swinderen
The Neurosciences Institute; Experimental Neuroscience; San Diego, California USA
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDF If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.