In a new study, published in eLife, researchers in the labs of Mark Stokes and Kia Nobre investigated how visual search templates are reactivated to act as input filters for target detection. How the brain maintains a template of what you are currently searching for (your house keys, for example) has been a much-debated topic in neuroscience for the past 30 years. Previous research has indicated that neurons specialized for detecting the sought-after object when it is in view are also pre-activated when we are seeking it. This would mean that these ‘template’ neurons are active the entire time that we are searching.
Read more (Department of Experimental Psychology website)