How to train your brain and not lose concentration?

[Lord777]

A new study shows that constant self-monitoring of your attention level helps you better focus on tasks.

Many factors affect attention management: genetics, how aggressive or peaceful the environment is, past experiences, and of course, your own willpower. A new study from Princeton University suggests another way, in addition to willpower, is that people who continually check their own level of attention are better at focusing tasks.

Wandering thoughts, while not a bad way to relax the brain and mind in search of new creative ideas, can also lead to loss of productivity and even accidents, especially if such wandering thoughts occur constantly.

The study authors believe that such dips in attention happen because we simply do not pay enough attention to our attention. The researchers suggested that the loss of attention when performing tasks, as well as simply in life situations, happens because people do not adequately control the degree of their participation in a particular moment. Thought drips away gradually and the loss of attention may be detected too late, after the chain of events that produces behavioral errors has been triggered.

Accordingly, one way to train sustained attention is to provide a more sensitive feedback signal that can be taught to people to sense impending lowered attention earlier and prevent it through behavioral changes.

In this study, researchers monitored the brain activity of several student participants who performed a repetitive task that required focus. The participants lay inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI), looking at pictures of people's faces superimposed on a certain background. People had to press a button when they saw a woman's or a man's face, or an image on the street or indoors. Each time the researchers noted brain activity that showed decreased attention, the next task was set harder than the last, forcing them to concentrate harder after losing their attention. This led to improved performance as students learned to test and control their attention.

In other words, real-time feedback from our brains can help reduce loss of attention and focus much better. If the participant had to focus on a facial image and was distracted, the researchers saw it in their brain before it could lead to a task error. Then they warned the participant that he was distracted, increasing the difficulty of the task in order to make him focus. When he began to focus, the task was easier for him. Thus, by giving people access to their brain states, the researchers have provided information to help avoid mistakes.

This proves that our brains have the flexibility to focus, or, so to speak, the ability to improve focus when tested. After the training period, the participants learned to distinguish between these two states: the moment of loss of attention and the moment of concentration, which helped them to stay in the zone of attention.

The most interesting applications of this study can be found in everyday life. We all cannot stay focused on what we are trying to do. This also applies to driving for an extended period of time. The study authors also hope that further research on the subject could lead to treatment for disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

However, we are definitely not robots. It is quite normal to find yourself staring at the clouds in the window. And sometimes these moments of distraction can be quite good for our brain, like a fresh breath of air.

 

[CarderPlanet]

Light a fire in me: how the brain motivates us to action
Even the most strong-willed person can do little without good motivation. But what is it, and how does it arise? What parts of the brain are responsible for it? Why is it so difficult to force ourselves to do something - and vice versa, which helps us to contain and overcome temptation?
Judging by the queries in the search engines, many people want to know where the "motivation centers" are. However, unfortunately, there are no such centers on the map of the cerebral hemispheres: many parts of the nervous tissue are involved in the creation and processing of stimulating impulses, and all of them are simultaneously engaged in other processes.

Like all processes in the brain, motivation is a complex process. It is based on the action of neurotransmitters - biologically active chemicals that transmit an electrical impulse from neuron to neuron and from neurons to muscle tissue. In the case of motivation, neurotransmitters have an awakening effect on the brain, forcing it to create desire, assess rewards, focus attention, turn to skills or memory, and perform other actions necessary for what becomes an act seconds later.

The main character here is dopamine, known to many as the "pleasure hormone". For the brain, this is an important substance: it is produced in its tissues on a variety of occasions and participates in a variety of processes, causing a feeling of revitalization and joy of receiving a reward, uplift and improved mood. The curious thing, however, is that when a person is on the way to a goal, dopamine completes its task before it is achieved. He rewards us before we get what we want, makes the path, pushes the mind forward, prompting us to achieve what we want or avoid a pleasant threat. As a result, what happens is what we are all familiar with: the prospect of fighting with circumstances tickles our nerves, the promise of a reward is encouraging, small steps on the way to it are encouraging.

But where does dopamine come from and where? It all starts in the limbic system - a collection of various brain structures that is located under the cerebral cortex, deep in the skull, and is responsible for basic patterns of behavior that are favorable from the point of view of evolution, participates in the formation of emotions and performs other functions. If you are walking in a dark park and the sound of another passerby's footsteps behind makes you fearful and want to run away, this limbic system warns you of possible danger. If you hear a stranger crying and can't help but pay attention to it, it's her again: she invites you to protect the helpless cub. If you see a donut on display in a cafe and want to eat it, that's also her job - advising to eat nutritious food whenever it is available.

Even an alligator has a limbic system. From the point of view of evolution, it is considered one of the most ancient elements of the brain, and during the development of the human embryo it is laid earlier than the cerebral cortex (but later than the trunk, which connects the brain to the spinal cord and is responsible for reflexes). "Attack", "run away", "eat", "procreate", "protect the babies" are all signals of the limbic system. She actively participates in the formation of an emotional response to external and internal circumstances, as well as the effects that emotions have on the body (for example, the pulse quickens from anger, and the blood rushes to the face from shame). Some scientists call the limbic system the dopamine system. After all, its work is based on the action of dopamine.

However, a person would not be a person if he could not boast not only a functional limbic system, but also a perfectly developed cerebral cortex, which distinguishes us so much from all other living things on the planet. The cortex of the human brain, among other things, is capable of processing abstract concepts and goals, as well as evaluating abstract rewards, including in perspective. This fact, apparently, partly underlies the motivational processes.

"Sometimes what we feel is fulfilling is necessary for our survival," says Samuel McClew, head of the Decision Making Neuroscience Lab at Stanford University. “But the large prefrontal cortex is one of the hallmarks of our species, and its ability to process abstract concepts and goals is unique. We can use these areas to overcome the automatic effects of the limbic system and motivate ourselves to engage in different behaviors. Surprisingly, everyone can behave according to abstract ideals, and not in the way that an instant reward system requires."

Neuroscientists today believe that all strategies for human behavior are automatic. They are based on the desire to survive, inherent in us, as well as in representatives of any other species on the planet, evolutionarily. The impulse of hunger, aggression, escape, the desire to reproduce or to protect the offspring is born in the tissues of the limbic system and pushes us towards a simple decision-making strategy. However, the brain is designed in such a way that for this impulse to be realized "in action" it must pass through the prefrontal cortex, which is capable of creating abstract goals and a way of behavior based on them. She evaluates the offer from the limbic system and decides whether to use it.

The dialog looks something like this:
Limbic system: "Eat a donut!"
Prefrontal cortex: "It's high in calories."
L. p .: “Exactly! Come on, eat! "
PK .: "But I'm on a diet."
L. p .: "He's delicious!"
PK.: “No, I have an Oscar ceremony in a month. Imagine how I will look in my new tuxedo if I lose weight! "
L. p.: "Delicious donut!"
PK “Standing on the red carpet and feeling attractive will be much more pleasant than eating a donut and breaking your diet. No ".
As a result, a person orders a salad.

The researchers believe that making decisions based on abstract goals and abstract brain benefits is difficult. It takes more energy, takes more time. However, the motivation to continue acting contrary to the recommendations of the limbic system is also supported by short bursts of dopamine. They happen if we reach an intermediate goal: for example, "overcome the temptation" or "lost another kilogram." These bursts act like an advance and promise a great sense of achieving a big abstract goal, the Goal with a capital T (and the colossal amount of dopamine that accompanies this event). It cannot be compared to the momentary pleasure of eating a donut, so the brain, in fact, treats the person honestly and simply invites him to choose "more pleasure."

“Motivation depends on the cortex, because it is the cortex that provides us with the goal,” McCleu says. “But what makes her choose one target over many others? This is a question of the activity of the dopamine reward system within the limbic system, or rather, the nucleus accumbens (the so-called pleasure center in the depths of the brain. - Ed.). At the same time, we can use the prefrontal cortex to think about possible scenarios and illustrate them with examples. This is how you create an expectation of what reward you will receive, and thereby create a goal for the future. So, as a process, motivation relies on both the limbic system and the mesocortical pathway (one of the dopamine neural pathways. - Ed.). Having imagined a possible scenario for the development of events, you use this path to determine the size of the "dividends".

But how does the brain choose an abstract goal so that we can strive for it? Today the answer to this question does not exist, but neuroscientists suggest that the basis of choice is the assessment of potential reward. Perhaps our mind each time evaluates its capabilities and individual wishes, and then chooses the most pleasant, and perhaps the most difficult to achieve: after all, the more small steps you have to take on the way to the goal, the more dopamine the brain will receive. And even more than that: the more work will be invested in the implementation of the task, the stronger the emotional, and, probably, dopamine response in the final will be.
Is this process based on "evolutionary" aspirations: to be full, to find a suitable partner, to defeat the enemy? Probably yes. Steve Jobs advised "to stay hungry", Sigmund Freud argued that creativity is a sublimation of libido, various monastic orders recommended asceticism to maintain spiritual fire, restrictive vows were adopted among medieval chivalry, which were not removed until the hero achieved the task. There are countless examples in culture where self-restraint has been used to achieve abstract goals. Obviously, this intuitive strategy is based on the intuitive use of the desire generated by the limbic system as fuel. Perhaps its presence allows us to trigger the dopamine "mechanics", and, as a result, motivates us to move forward.