Neurons hidden in older parts of the brain control our ability to pay attention by suppressing distractions and directing our focus.
Johns Hopkins researchers’ discovery of these neurons in mice, which are part of the brain in all vertebrates including humans, could be a step toward more targeted treatments for attention disorders.
“The hallmark of ADHD is that we are distracted by even subtle distractions, and that’s exactly what we see here when these neurons are silenced,” said lead author Shreesh Mysore, a neuroscientist who studies neural circuits related to behavior. “But the next day, when the neurons are turned on again, the same animal is once again able to ignore distractions, even very strong ones.”
This federally funded study is newly published. nature communicationswas selected as an Editorial Highlight.
Most animals and humans can eliminate distractions and focus on the most relevant information at any given time. It helps you find friends in a crowd or track conversations in a noisy room. That ability, selective spatial attention, is affected by conditions such as autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
For a long time, attention was thought to be driven solely by the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is a region of the brain that is highly developed only in humans and primates. But that doesn’t explain how much other animals can pay attention and focus.
If you really go back in evolution, birds have had this ability and fish have had this ability for hundreds of millions of years. And since they typically do not have highly developed prefrontal cortex, how does the brain solve this problem? We were able to identify an evolutionarily ancient region of the brainstem that enables this ability. ”
Ninad Kothari, lead author, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University
The researchers discovered that the mouse’s attention is also controlled in the brainstem by a circuit of inhibitory neurons found in all vertebrates, including birds and fish. The impetus to identify these neurons in mice and investigate their function in mammals stems from previous work by Mysore and other scientists in birds, frogs, and turtles.
The researchers had mice perform attention tasks similar to humans. The mouse had to focus on visual information presented directly in front of it on the screen while ignoring distracting information to the side. Mice earned a reward if they touched the screen with their noses in the location indicated by the immediate information rather than in the location indicated by the distracting information. The mice were very good at it until the research team temporarily disabled brainstem neurons.
“When you inactivate these neurons, the mice become very distracted,” Kothari said.
Further experiments ruled out that it wasn’t some impairment in locomotor behavior or the animals’ ability to see that was preventing the mice that silenced these neurons from succeeding in the task.
“The only thing that was impaired was the ability to retrieve and compare competing information and pay attention to where the most important information was. This part of the brain is like an attentional selection engine,” Mysore said. It helps answer the question, “What is the most important information to focus on right now?”
Next, the researchers hope to understand how these neurons control spatial attention in vertebrates and, ultimately, to what extent they play a role in human attention.
“All evidence so far suggests that these neurons also exist in humans,” Mysore said. “But are they involved in selective spatial attention in humans? An interesting hypothesis is that they play an important role.”
They hope to measure the activity of these neurons in people with ADHD and autism, which could lead to more targeted drugs and treatments if their function is indeed affected.
Authors include Arunima Banerjee, Qingcheng (Jessica) Zhang, and Wen-Kai You of Johns Hopkins University.
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Reference magazines:
Kothari, N.B.; Others. (2026). Control of selective spatial attention requires evolutionarily ancient brainstem neurons. nature communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-72340-9. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41467-026-72340-9
