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Paying close attention to something:

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not that easy, is it?

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It's because our attention is pulled
in so many different directions at a time,

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and it's in fact pretty impressive
if you can stay focused.

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Many people think that attention
is all about what we are focusing on,

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but it's also about what information
our brain is trying to filter out.

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There are two ways
you direct your attention.

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First, there's overt attention.

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In overt attention,
you move your eyes towards something

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in order to pay attention to it.

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Then there's covert attention.

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In covert attention,
you pay attention to something,

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but without moving your eyes.

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Think of driving for a second.

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Your overt attention,
your direction of the eyes,

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are in front,

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but that's your covert attention

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which is constantly scanning
the surrounding area,

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where you don't actually look at them.

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I'm a computational neuroscientist,

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and I work on cognitive
brain machine interfaces,

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or bringing together
the brain and the computer.

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I love brain patterns.

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Brain patterns are important for us

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because based on them
we can build models for the computers,

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and based on these models

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computers can recognize
how well our brain functions,

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and if it doesn't function well,

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then these computers themselves
can be used as assistive devices

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for therapies.

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But that also means something,

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because choosing the wrong patterns

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will give us the wrong models

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and therefore the wrong therapies.

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Right?

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In case of attention,

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the fact that we can

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shift our attention not only by our eyes

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but also by thinking --

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that makes covert attention
an interesting model for computers.

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So I wanted to know
what are the brainwave patterns

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when you look overtly
or when you look covertly.

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I set up an experiment for that.

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In this experiment
there are two flickering squares,

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one of them flickering
at a slower rate than the other one.

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Depending on which of these flickers
you are paying attention to,

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certain parts of your brain
will start resonating in the same rate

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as that flickering rate.

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So by analyzing your brain signals,

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we can track where exactly
you are watching

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or you are paying attention to.

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So to see what happens in your brain
when you pay overt attention,

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I asked people to look directly
in one of the squares

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and pay attention to it.

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In this case, not surprisingly,
we saw that these flickering squares

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appeared in their brain signals

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which was coming
from the back of their head,

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which is responsible for the processing
of your visual information.

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But I was really interested

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to see what happens in your brain
when you pay covert attention.

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So this time I asked people
to look in the middle of the screen

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and without moving their eyes,

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to pay attention
to either of these squares.

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When we did that,

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we saw that both of these flickering rates
appeared in their brain signals,

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but interestingly,

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only one of them,
which was paid attention to,

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had stronger signals,

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so there was something in the brain

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which was handling this information

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so that thing in the brain was basically
the activation of the frontal area.

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The front part of your brain
is responsible

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for higher cognitive functions as a human.

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The frontal part,
it seems that it works as a filter

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trying to let information come in
only from the right flicker

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that you are paying attention to

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and trying to inhibit the information
coming from the ignored one.

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The filtering ability of the brain
is indeed a key for attention,

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which is missing in some people,

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for example in people with ADHD.

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So a person with ADHD
cannot inhibit these distractors,

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and that's why they can't focus
for a long time on a single task.

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But what if this person

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could play a specific computer game

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with his brain connected to the computer,

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and then train his own brain

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to inhibit these distractors?

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Well, ADHD is just one example.

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We can use this cognitive
brain machine interfaces

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for many other cognitive fields.

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It was just a few years ago

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that my grandfather had a stroke
and he lost complete ability to speak.

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He could understand everybody,
but there was no way to respond,

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even not writing
because he was illiterate.

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So he passed away in silence.

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I remember thinking at that time,

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what if we could have a computer

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which could speak for him?

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Now, after years that I am in this field,

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I can see that this might be possible.

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Imagine if we can find brainwave patterns

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when people think
about images or even letters,

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like the letter A generates
a different brainwave pattern

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than the letter B, and so on.

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Could a computer one day
communicate for people who can't speak?

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What if a computer

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can help us understand
the thoughts of a person in a coma?

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We are not there yet,

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but pay close attention.

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We will be there soon.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)