Do you have the cerebral flexibility to concentrate despite the distractions?
When it comes to concentration, some people are able to find focus amidst the hubbub, while others are easily distracted by the slightest thing. An American study tells us more about the brain mechanisms that enable individuals to stay focused, despite the many distractions that surround them.

This research, published in the journal Human Nature Behavior, builds on the conclusions of a previous study, which revealed that some people are able to separately control how much they focus and how much they filter. This enables them to enhance what’s relevant and tune out distraction. But, until now, the brain process by which these two functions combine to work together has been relatively poorly understood.

Harrison Ritz and Amitai Shenhav, two researchers from Brown University, therefore asked volunteers to perform a cognitive task while they analysed their neural activity using a functional MRI scanner.

For example, study participants had to determine which colour was dominant within a swirling mass of green and purple dots, which moved from left to right.

The scientists observed that the intraparietal sulcus, a region of the brain located in the parietal lobe, plays a fundamental role in the concentration process.

“You can think about the intraparietal sulcus as having two knobs on a radio dial: one that adjusts focusing and one that adjusts filtering,” Harrison Ritz explains in a news release.

“In our study, the anterior cingulate cortex tracks what’s going on with the dots. When the anterior cingulate cortex recognises that, for instance, motion is making the task more difficult, it directs the intraparietal sulcus to adjust the filtering knob in order to reduce the sensitivity to motion.”

Shedding light

In other words, concentration is, above all, a question of cerebral flexibility. Our brain adapts its functioning so that we can concentrate on a precise thing, despite the distractions that surround us. This explains, for example, why some people are able to hold a conversation in a noisy bar. “In the same way that we bring together more than 50 muscles to perform a physical task like using chopsticks, our study found that we can coordinate multiple different forms of attention in order to perform acts of mental dexterity,” Ritz continues.

The findings of this study highlight the importance of mental coordination. “When people talk about the limitations of the mind, they often put it in terms of, ‘humans just don’t have the mental capacity’ or ‘humans lack computing power,’” Ritz concludes. “These findings support a different perspective on why we’re not focused all the time. It’s not that our brains are too simple, but instead that our brains are really complicated, and it’s the coordination that’s hard.”

This research could provide scientists with a better understanding of certain attention-related disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). All too often, this neurodevelopmental disorder is still perceived as the consequence of educational failures, which greatly complicates its diagnosis and treatment. It is estimated that ADHD affects 5.9% of young people and 2.5% of adults, according to the World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement. – AFP Relaxnews
The findings of this study highlight the importance of mental coordination and could provide scientists with a better understanding of certain attention-related disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).