The brain pays attention in two ways

Detecting a bear in the forest, your brain " screams " attention !. But it is a different brain region when you study bears in a zoo.

Recent research shows that you use two different brain regions: one for deliberate attention, and one for attention to distraction. This finding could help scientists develop better treatments for people with focused disorders.

Basically, the brain has two ways to pay attention: " top down" or intentional attention, such as when you read a book, and "bottom up" or unconsciously pay attention to sensory information, term as loud noises, vibrant colors or threatening animals.

Scientists already know that paying attention to the need to mobilize many different brain regions, but don't know how, because so far only one area of ​​the brain has been tested for a while.

Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has attached painless electrodes to monkeys to track how these two basic brain regions interact with each other as the brain jumps from uncle form. this idea is different.

The monkeys were trained to perform attention tests on a video screen, with a reward of one cup of juice. Sometimes they have to concentrate, pick out the left-leaning red rectangles from a group of red rectangles, similar to how the human brain picks up a friend's face in the crowd. Other times bright rectangles - to distract attention - flashed on the screen in front of the monkey.

When the monkey volunteered to pay attention, the prefrontal cortex would work. But when something distracts its attention, the signal will come from the cortical region of the cortex, toward the back of the brain.

Electrical activity in these two regions begins to change with the rhythm as they pay attention to each. But it is at different frequencies, similar to stopping at different points on a radio frequency range.

The intention is related to low frequency neuron activities, while attention distraction occurs at higher frequencies.

Miller concluded, scientists could one day find a solution to increase or decrease the volume to increase attention.

T. An