When your brain needs you to pay attention to something important, one way it can do that is to send out a burst of noradrenaline, according to a new MIT study. This neuromodulator, produced by a structure deep in the brain called the locus coeruleus, can have widespread effects throughout the brain. In a study of mice, the MIT team found that one key role of noradrenaline, also known as norepinephrine, is to help the brain learn from surprising outcomes. “What this work shows is that the locus coeruleus encodes…
