“MY NAME is Dug,” says the dog, literally, in the Pixar movie “Up.” He explains that he can talk thanks to the collar his master gave him, allowing him to share his thoughts. “He is a good and smart master and he made me this collar so that I may talk—Squirrel!”
Like Dug, some people can be easily distracted from their tasks. They may walk into the supermarket to buy a particular item and come out with a dozen products, none of which are the original planned purchase. While the incident would likely lead to a second shopping trip, it’s not necessarily as dangerous as deciding to read and reply to a text message while crossing a busy street.
In the May 4 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, a team of researchers from several European universities linked a person’s level of distractibility to a specific part of the brain located just below the top of one’s head. Identifying this region could help scientists understand the processes involved in enabling people to ignore distractors, or allow them to cause delays in completing a project.
“The ability to select goal-relevant information while ignoring irrelevant distraction is essential for survival,” wrote study senior author Geraint Rees, director of the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, and his colleagues in their paper. “Distraction can impair productivity and increase the risk of accidents.”
In the study, Rees and his team made use of a survey that asked several dozen participants to assess themselves on how easily they were distracted when performing daily tasks. For example, among the list of questions was one asking if shoppers found themselves unable to find the item they wanted to get, even though it was available for purchase in the store. They confirmed the accuracy of the self-assessments through a series of experiments.
For one of the experiments, the researchers worked with more than a dozen volunteers, asking them to look at sets of five images flashing on a screen to identify one particular colored shape, and the direction of the line within the object. For example, one set might consist of four green diamonds and a red circle, all with single lines drawn inside the shapes. Each participant had to recognize the red shape, and then note if the line inside was vertical or horizontal. A second set of images might have three green diamonds, one green circle and a red diamond. Again, the test participant would have to look for the red shape and determine the direction of the line.
During the experiments, the researchers took images of the participants’ brains to find out which parts were active. They found that a part of the brain called the left superior parietal lobe (SPL) near the top of the head was active when the participants were distracted, and that the degree of distraction was associated with the density of the gray matter in that portion of the brain. When Rees and his colleagues blocked activity in the SPL, they found that participants were less distracted, and were able to complete their tasks faster.
Their findings offer neuroscientists several areas for study, and Rees and his team seem to be considering one that involves more distractors.
“A recent study showed that chronic multitaskers in the media environment are worse at filtering out interference from irrelevant information,” they noted in the conclusion of their journal paper. “It will be interesting to examine how our media-rich online culture influences individual brain structure and distractibility.”
E-mail the author at massie@massie.com.