Brain: Synchronized Brain Waves Focus Our Attention

From Denny: From the wonderful site Wired Science comes another interesting article about how the brain focuses our attention. Researchers are just now beginning to find out how our brain does it.

"Separate brain regions firing in unison may be what keeps us focused on important things while we ignore distractions.

A deluge of visual information hits our eyes every second, yet we’re able to focus on the minuscule fraction that’s relevant to our goals. When we try to find our way through an unfamiliar area of town, for example, we manage to ignore the foliage, litter and strolling pedestrians, and focus our attention on the street signs.

Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered that the brain’s control center syncs up to its visual center with high-frequency brain waves, directing attention to select features of the visual world.

“It’s been known that the prefrontal cortex plays an important role in focusing our attention, but the mystery was how,” said neuroscientist Robert Desimone, who led the study, published in Science Friday. “Now we have some insight into how it has that focusing role — through this synchrony with our sensory systems.”

For the rest of this interesting article on the latest about our brain's ability to focus and how this can impact research and understanding of problems like ADD, go here.

Brain: Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain

From Denny: The blog Wired Science is carrying this interesting story right now. Science and the public have known for some time that children in poverty go to ill-equipped schools and score lower than middle class and wealthy children. What is new is from a long-term study that has found hormones produced from long-term stress literally wears down the brain. Chronic psychological stress is a key indicator of future low achievement into adulthood.

"A plausible contributor to the income-achievement gap is working-memory impairment in lower-income adults caused by stress-related damage to the brain during childhood," they wrote.

Why is working memory so important? Because it encapsulates the abilities for reading, language and problem-solving, all are critical for later success in life.

For the full article worth reading, go here.