This 2014 human study at Vanderbilt found that our long-term memory usually selects what we pay closer visual attention to:

“Improvements in attentional tuning were accompanied by changes in an electrophysiological signal hypothesized to index long-term memory.”

The focus was on electrical fields, leading to predictable statements:

“Follow-up studies using neuroimaging techniques are needed to identify definitively the brain areas and associated networks responsible for the rapid changes in perceptual attention we observed.”

The researchers also found that 20 minutes of electrical brain stimulation helps tune perceptual attention. Is it in vogue that attention studies like this one and Can psychologists exclude the limbic system and adequately study awareness and social cognition? seemed to need gadgets that zapped the subjects’ brains?

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/625.full “Enhancing long-term memory with stimulation tunes visual attention in one trial”