Attention acts as a brain’s own light source

Research by cognitive neuroscientist Sumiya Sheikh Abdirashid shows that our attention does more than just “focus”: it actively changes how we see the world.

In daily life, our brains have to process an enormous amount of visual information. Because we cannot take everything in at once, attention helps us choose what is important. However, exactly how this works in the brain was not yet fully understood.

Zoom lens
Sumiya’s research shows that attention functions as a kind of zoom lens. When we focus our attention narrowly, visual information is processed more sharply and precisely than when we spread our attention widely. Moreover, this “zoom function” turns out to work surprisingly independently: visual properties such as contrast have no influence on what we see, as long as we do not pay attention to them.

Only when an image catches our attention do features such as contrast come into play. The strength of this effect depends on several factors: whether the object falls within our field of attention and whether it resembles something we are already focused on. Sheikh Abdirashid demonstrates that attention not only selects but also actively shapes our perception. This has broad societal implications. Consider situations where rapid and accurate visual processing is crucial, such as in traffic, healthcare, or security professions. This insight can also help improve education, user interfaces, and treatments for attention disorders. The research contributes to a better understanding of a fundamental process that everyone uses daily: how we choose what we see – and how that determines our reality.