skip to main |
skip to sidebar
How the Brain Filters Out Distracting Thoughts to Focus on a Single Bit of Information
According to researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, your brain filters out information in your brain that may distract you in order to focus on one thing at a time. I found this article on Sciencedaily.com
Think of your brain like a radio: You're turning the knob to find your favourite station, but the knob jams, and you're stuck listening to something that's in between stations. It's a frustrating combination that makes it quite hard to get an update on swine flu while a Michael Jackson song wavers in and out. Staying on the right frequency is the only way to really hear what you're after. In much the same way, the brain's nerve cells are able to "tune in" to the right station to get exactly the information they need, says researcher Laura Colgin, who was the paper's first author. "Just like radio stations play songs and news on different frequencies, the brain uses different frequencies of waves to send different kinds of information," she says.
[...]parts of the hippocampus, which is a key memory center in the brain. While listening in on the rat brain wave transmissions, the researchers started to realize that there might be something more to a specific sub-set of brain waves, called gamma waves.
Overall this article is saying that your brain can not focus on more than one thing at a time. It has to choose one thing to focus on at a time. There are cells in the brain that pick a frequency that it wants to focus on. Either a slow or a fast frequency. Your brain, like Colgin said in the article, works kind of like a radio, using frequencies to find one bit of information to focus on. But I found out that people who have schizophrenia have a lot of trouble keeping these brain signals straight. They can't tell is what they are hearing is from a memory they've had or if it's a present voice they are hearing. Overall I actually learned a lot from this article. I've always thought I could be a multi-tasker, but it turns out nobody can, because your brain can only focus on one bit of information at a time.
I think that is kind of weird because like some people can like sing a song, write the lyrics down to a different song, and hop on one foot at the same time. Doesn't the brain have to control these functions?
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting post, Stephanie. I have never been able to concentrate on things like school work when the television or radio are turned on, and I guess this helps to explain why. (And justifies my opinion that it's not a good idea to let students listen to their iPods while they are doing classwork.)
ReplyDeleteOverall an excellent post, especially for your first one. The only small piece of criticism is that you cut off the first sentence of the second paragraph of your quote. I think you probably would have been better off to just copy the whole sentence.
Nicely done! 24/25
Christian...I think that the type of multi-tasking that you're asking about is possible because it involves things that you know how to do so well that you don't have to think about them. Try reading a book that you've never read before while writing the words to that song while trying to walk on your hands. Now you're having to actually think about each of the three activities, which is going to cause your brain problems.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're multi-tasking, your brain shifts its focus back and forth between the two (or three or four) things that you are trying to do. So the more time and energy it has to devote to one task, the less time and energy it will have to devote to the others.
At first I thought I could listen to music and write a paper at the same time. But then I realized that I wasn't actually listening to the words. Thats really interesting.
ReplyDeleteI also think too, that you can do both things at the same time, because I always have to study or am doing homework with music or TV but i guess thats just a bad habit of mine. I tried it again and it really does not work. I am surprised.
ReplyDelete