Your Brain Calls in Backup to Find Lost Things

When you lose something important---a child, your wallet, the keys---your brain kicks into overdrive to find the missing object. But that's not just a matter of extra concentration. Researchers have found that in these intense search situations your brain actually rallies extra visual processing troops (and even some other non-visual parts of the brain) to get the job done. It has to do with the way your brain processes images in the first place. When you see objects, your brain sorts them into broad categories---about 1,000 of them. The various elements we perceive trigger a pattern of different categorical areas in our brains. For example, if you see a woman carrying an umbrella while walking her dog in the park, your brain might catalog it as "people," "tools" and "animals." But when you lose something, your brain reacts a little differently. It expands the category of the object you're looking ...