• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Monday, October 6, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Health

The structure and function of cortical brain cells modulated by attention

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
April 7, 2021
in Health
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
IMAGE
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

This is the subject of the work by Demetrio Ferro, a researcher at the Center for Brain and Cognition, published on 23 March in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

IMAGE

Credit: Demetrio Ferro, Jochem van Kempen, Michael Boyd, Stefano Panzeri and Alexander Thielee

To effectively perform any daily task, the human brain needs to process information from the outside world using various cognitive functions. This cognitive processing passes through a dense interconnected network of cells whose physiology is specialized. The interconnected cell network needs to perform this processing of information efficiently and interact cooperatively to provide us, in real time, with useful instructions for living.

Research published on 23 March in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America challenges recent scientific advances seeking to find out how cognitive control and sensory information relate to the cortical machinery consisting of specialized overlapping layers of cells.

“We have had the opportunity to investigate for the first time how between different depths signals propagate between the two cortical areas V1 and V4, and how they are modulated by attention”

A study by Demetrio Ferro, first author of the article and a researcher at the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) of the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC), which he has carried out together with researchers from the Centre for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems, the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), the University of Trento (Italy) and Newcastle University (UK).

Previously, it has been argued that this operation of the cell network is not implemented in a step-by-step flow process, that would the conventional algorithmic calculation we generally apply to the tools of our technology of everyday use. There might be a need for another important instrument of cognitive control to enable selecting which objects of the visual world are important for processing, i.e., focal attention.

Focal attention is an important tool of cognitive control in information processing


Anatomical arrangement of cortical brain cells

The most recent scientific evidence suggests that cognitive control over the variables in our environment may be implemented in a parallel processing flow associated with various rhythmic oscillations of neural signals used for integrating inbound details (colour, shape, spatial orientation) of the sensory visual domain.

“Moreover, it is interesting to ask ourselves whether we can inspect the architecture of neural processing units by their structure, that is, by how they are physically implemented in the anatomy of the cerebral cortex”, Demetrio Ferro asserts.

And the researcher adds: “the circuits associated with these calculations show a layered structure made of laminar plates of overlapping specialized types of cell at cortical depth, each possibly specialized to perform certain functions”.

For this study, the researchers worked with primates and analysed cortical electrophysiological signals at multiple depths recorded simultaneously in V1 and V4 brain areas. “Our analyses provided new knowledge about how information spreads along the dimension of depth within and between the two cortical areas V1 and V4”, they assert in their study.

The authors reveal that “we have had the opportunity to investigate for the first time how this signal propagation circuit is modulated by attention, that is, to identify what depths interact with more or less force when we have more or less attention involvement”.

“This study opens the way to associating deficits in fundamental cognitive functions such as attention at specific depths of neural tissue, and even the possibility of clinical-pharmacological intervention on their interaction”

First, “our contribution shows how the previous vision of canonical circuits within visual cortical areas is not immediately linked to the idea of parallel processing flows divided in frequency for cognitive control and sensory processing. Rather, the combination of the two is a more complex and interesting scene”, Ferro explains.

###

Related work:

Demetrio Ferro, Jochem van Kempen, Michael Boyd, Stefano Panzeri, Alexander Thiele (2021), “Directed information exchange between cortical layers in macaque V1 and V4 and its modulation by selective attention”, 23 de març, PNAS. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022097118

Media Contact
Núria Pérez
[email protected]

Original Source

https://www.upf.edu/en/web/focus/noticies/-/asset_publisher/qOocsyZZDGHL/content/id/244381810/maximized#.YG1saugzaM_

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022097118

Tags: BehaviorBiologyMedicine/HealthMental HealthneurobiologyPerception/AwarenessSocial/Behavioral Science
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Advancing Health Recommender Systems: A New Nursing Framework

October 6, 2025

Age, Insects Shape Cadaver Microbes, Aid PMI

October 6, 2025

DeepMice: Revolutionary Protein-Ligand Docking Model Unveiled

October 6, 2025

Living with Long COVID: Kids’ Perspectives Unveiled

October 6, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    95 shares
    Share 38 Tweet 24
  • New Study Indicates Children’s Risk of Long COVID Could Double Following a Second Infection – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    92 shares
    Share 37 Tweet 23
  • New Insights Suggest ALS May Be an Autoimmune Disease

    71 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 18
  • Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    75 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Advancing Health Recommender Systems: A New Nursing Framework

Age, Insects Shape Cadaver Microbes, Aid PMI

Revolutionary Classifier Uncovers Prokaryotic Efflux Proteins

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 63 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.