Suppression yields higher-quality representations of relevant information by decreasing the noise and letting the signal shine. It is an essential ingredient of selective attention. Although it may seem counterintuitive, we now appreciate that focusing and ignoring are not two sides of the same coin. In other words, it is not necessarily true that when you focus more on something, you automatically ignore everything else better. We have shown in our lab that different prefrontal cortex networks are engaged when we focus compared to when we ignore the same thing. In other words, they are two
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