When acting in a complex visual environment, it is essential to be able to flexibly allocate attention to parts of the visual scene that may contain goal-relevant information. The paper by Jia et al. provides novel evidence that our brains sequentially sample different objects in a visual scene. The results were obtained using “temporal response functions,” in which unique electroencephalographic (EEG) signals corresponding to the processing of 2 continuously presented objects were isolated in an object-specific way. These response functions were dominated by 10-Hz alpha-band activity. Crucially, the different objects were sequentially sampled at a rate of about 2 Hz. These findings provide important neurophysiological insights into how our visual system operates in complex environments.

在复杂的视觉环境中行动时，至关重要的是能够灵活地将注意力分配到视觉场景中可能包含与目标相关的信息的部分。贾等人的论文。提供了新颖的证据，证明我们的大脑在视觉场景中顺序采样了不同的对象。使用“时间响应函数”获得了结果，其中以对象特定的方式隔离了对应于处理2个连续显示的对象的唯一脑电图（EEG）信号。这些响应函数主要由10 Hz的alpha频段活动决定。至关重要的是，不同的对象以大约2 Hz的频率顺序采样。这些发现为我们的视觉系统在复杂环境中的运作方式提供了重要的神经生理学见解。