When you navigate a maze, you don't memorize every twist. Your brain builds a simplified mental model, focusing only on what matters. A new study from researchers at University College London reveals that visuospatial attention—your brain's 'spotlight'—controls which parts of a task become subjectively available for planning. The more naturally attention aligns with task-relevant information, the simpler and more useful your mental representation becomes.
The research
Jason da Silva Castanheira, Nicholas Shea, and Stephen M. Fleming (University College London) published their findings in eLife (2026) and on arXiv (2506.09520v2). In a virtual maze navigation experiment, they tracked how participants built mental representations of the environment. They found that spatial proximity determines which maze regions participants can use for planning—distal parts are effectively invisible to conscious planning. Moreover, when task-relevant areas aligned with natural left/right attentional biases, participants constructed simpler, more accurate mental maps. The effect of attention varied widely across individuals, explaining differences in how people represent and solve the same task. The authors incorporated these effects into computational models of value-guided construal, bridging perception and decision-making.
Why it matters
This research reveals that your ability to plan—whether navigating a city or solving a problem—depends on how your attention naturally highlights relevant information. Understanding this can help you structure your environment to reduce mental clutter. For instance, placing key information where your attention naturally falls (e.g., central or left field) can make planning feel easier and more accurate.
What you can do
When tackling a complex task, physically organize related information in a way that matches your visual scan path (e.g., left-to-right if you're a left-attention-biased person). Practice focusing your attention deliberately with mindfulness or cognitive training—this may improve your ability to build useful mental representations under time pressure.
Source: arXiv q-bio.NC
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