Design of psychophysical experiment and reset occasion. Credit score: Tendencies in Cognitive Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.004
While you take a look at the world round you, it’d really feel like your eyes and mind work in excellent sync—taking in a clean, steady stream of knowledge. However in line with new analysis led by cognitive neuroscientist Prof. Ayelet N. Landau from the Hebrew College of Jerusalem, that is not fairly how the mind works. As a substitute, consideration behaves extra like a strobe mild: flickering out and in at a gentle rhythm.
In a brand new opinion piece revealed in Tendencies in Cognitive Sciences, Landau and her staff—Daniele Re and Flor Kusnir—suggest a daring reframing of how consideration features. Their concept, referred to as “attentional sampling,” means that our brains course of the visible world in speedy snapshots roughly eight instances per second. When pressured to separate consideration between two objects, that charge drops to 4 snapshots per second for every.
This is not only a quirk of notion. The researchers argue it is a basic answer to a deep drawback for cognition and its neural implementation: competitors.
“Our environment bombards us with visual information, but our brain can’t process everything at once,” Landau defined. “What we’re seeing in attentional sampling is the brain’s way of resolving this—by rhythmically switching between competing inputs.”
The phenomenon builds on a well-established concept often called “biased competition,” which holds that totally different neural populations within the mind’s visible system battle for dominance when a number of stimuli are current. Historically, scientists thought consideration merely ‘boosted’ one sign over one other. However Landau’s staff means that, below sure situations, the mind would not decide a facet—as an alternative, it takes turns.
The researchers examined research starting from early visible processing within the eye channels to high-level object recognition. Even when individuals weren’t conscious of the visible battle—reminiscent of when two photographs are subtly proven to totally different eyes—this sampling rhythm emerged, revealing a covert, automated mechanism for choice.
Intriguingly, this rhythm persists even when consideration is not consciously engaged, hinting at a default oscillatory mode of notion. “These aren’t conscious shifts,” mentioned Landau. “Even when we think we’re focusing on a single object, our attention may be dancing across the scene in ways we don’t realize.”
So, what’s controlling this rhythm? That continues to be a matter of scientific debate. Some proof means that higher-level mind areas—like these concerned in decision-making—might act like a conductor, coordinating this psychological beat. Others level to native circuits within the visible cortex itself. Both means, the implications stretch past imaginative and prescient. Understanding how the mind resolves competitors may affect every thing from interface design to neurological therapies.
Landau’s lab has been central in uncovering these hidden rhythms for over a decade. “What excites me,” she mentioned, “is that this could be a general principle—not just for visual attention, but for how the brain manages overload across all sensory systems.”
As we scroll by our digital worlds and bounce between tabs, it is humbling to understand our mind is already doing the identical—one flicker at a time.
Extra data:
Daniele Re et al, Attentional sampling resolves competitors alongside the visible hierarchy, Tendencies in Cognitive Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.004
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Hebrew College of Jerusalem
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New concept suggests consideration sparkles between competing sights like a strobe mild (2025, July 21)
retrieved 21 July 2025
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