What? You thought distracted drivers texting on cell phones and swerving erratically is a problem? That's so 2011. Imagine a future in which icons flash (Beyond texting: augmented-reality windshields — what could go wrong? "People who regularly practice meditation may improve their mental focus by altering brain function. Compared to non-meditators, they may be better equipped to quiet brain activity related to mind-wandering, a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests." 
"The title "The Myth of Monotasking" is based on the idea that the brain doesn't know how to monotask, in fact the term "multitasking" doesn't really mean much of anything when you think about it carefully since virtually everything we do as humans involves coordinating multiple cognitive tasks all happening at once. This interview helps straighten out some of the confusions around that mushy term and, I hope, helps lower anxiety about how well we are or are not doing against some mythical standard of sustained, focused attention. Bottom line: the mind wanders a lot because the mind's task is to wander." "Auto dashboards are becoming an arcade of text messages, GPS images, phone calls and web surfing, the government says, and it's asking carmakers to curb those distractions when vehicles are moving." "The study authors scanned the brains of 14 people -- seven men and seven women -- using functional MRI to measure bursts of activity in the brain. The researchers tracked the brains of the volunteers as they learned how to better use their peripheral vision through a computer game. In the game, participants learned to detect the presence or absence of a tilted letter "T" in the lower left side of a screen while they were distracted by other "T"s. It took about a week for the participants to figure out how to get to the level where their responses were correct 80 percent of the time. This is in contrast to the level of about 10 percent to 20 percent, where some participants began, Corbetta said. The game is similar to day-to-day life in the way that you have to figure out what to pay attention to as you navigate the world. "It's always a balance as to what you see and what you pay attention to," he said." 
"This extends to decision-making, which is the main subject of Honeybee Democracy. The bees exercise a collective intelligence that mimics not just small-group decision-making but the cognitive deliberations of our own brains:" 
"“Not only are working mothers multitasking more frequently than working fathers, but their multitasking experience is more negative as well,” according to a Michigan State University news release. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/01/05/how-multitasking-affects-mental-health/#ixzz1iu7CmdMr" By using our attention during a mindful meditation, we are training our brain to become more and more connected to the current moment. ![How a Computer Game is Reinventing the Science of Expertise [Video] | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network | attention | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/TQl5sMBxCF9mrxwxyAkKfjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
"If there is one general rule about the limitations of the human mind, it is that we are terrible at multitasking. The old phrase “united we stand, divided we fall” applies equally well to the mechanisms of attention as it does to a patriotic cause. When devoted to a single task, the brain excels; when several goals splinter its focus, errors become unavoidable. But clear exceptions challenge that general rule. Two weeks ago, thousands of computer game enthusiasts descended on a convention center in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, to observe some of these exceptions in action. They were attending the championships of one of the world’s hottest computer games, StarCraft 2." "Two years ago, researchers at UCLA found that specific regions in the brains of long-term meditators were larger and had more gray matter than the brains of individuals in a control group. This suggested that meditation may indeed be good for all of us since, alas, our brains shrink naturally with age. "Alongside the familiar patterns of mainstream attention, there are a huge number of new patterns that could only exist in digital culture. Some of these patterns are very slow, with attention accruing over months or years, as social recommendation or small groups of fans gradually accrue around content. Some are extremely fast, synchronising audiences’ attention around a piece of culture within days, before moving on just as quickly. Some are driven by deliberate plans, orchestrated between broadcast channels and social media. Some emerge via the organic connections of lots of smaller drivers, from blogs and niche channels to SEO and twitter accounts. But, regardless of the pattern itself, the difference is that they’re Spiky – there are no technical or economic constraints keeping the spotlight in one place anymore, so attention can move on as quickly as it arrived. This is the major shift that we are missing when we are nostalgic for the 20th century. We’re only just beginning to learn what culture looks like in spiky networks, and only just beginning to invent the companies and institutions that can survive long enough to support and invest in culture in this landscape." 
"Why would a former phone phreak who perseverated over the design of motherboards be interested in doing that? Using the mind to watch the mind, and ultimately to change how the mind works, is known in cognitive psychology as metacognition. Beneath the poetic cultural trappings of Buddhism, what intensive meditation offers to long-term practitioners is a kind of metacognitive hack of the human operating system (a metaphor that probably crossed Jobs’ mind at some point.) Sitting zazen offered Jobs a practical technique for upgrading the motherboard in his head." 'What does the brain do when we day dream, our mind wanders, our thoughts flit from one thing to another, or we seem to be mentally “idling”? Some evidence has accumulated during the past 30 years that implicates the involvement of an intrinsic default network in the brain: an anatomically defined network which includes the medial temporal lobe and medial prefrontal subsystems and posterior cingulate cortex. Functionally, this network supports a baseline, so-called default, mode of cortical activity that engages when externally directed thought is absent (stimulus-independent thought) and also possibly during watchfulness towards the external environment (stimulus-orientated thought). Brain activity in this default system seems to be inversely related to activity in another intrinsic network, the “attention system”, which is activated during goal-directed cognition. These networks have been explored mainly using brain imaging, but—though at first sight incongruous—could doodles, and the doodling that produces them, provide another way of probing the default network and the brain functions it supports? Although of enduring interest to the public and to teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and many in the humanities, doodles have received little attention from neuroscientists. Because of the circumstances in which they are often produced, however, doodles and doodling might reveal insights about how the brain functions, notably when in “idling” mode." |
"You're at a party. Music is playing. Glasses are clinking. Dozens of conversations are driving up the decibel level. Yet amid all those distractions, you can zero in on the one conversation you want to hear. This ability to hyper-focus on one stream of sound amid a cacophony of others is what researchers call the "cocktail-party effect." Now, scientists at the University of California in San Francisco have pinpointed where that sound-editing process occurs in the brain—in the auditory cortex just behind the ear, not in areas of higher thought. The auditory cortex boosts some sounds and turns down others so that when the signal reaches the higher brain, "it's as if only one person was speaking alone," says principle investigator Edward Chang. These findings, published in the journal Nature last week, underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking—our brains are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't." 
"Much has been said about what makes us human and what it means to be human. Language, which we’ve previously seen co-evolved with music to separate us from our primal ancestors, is not only one of the defining differentiators of our species, but also a key to our evolutionary success, responsible for the hallmarks of humanity, from art to technology to morality. So argues evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel in Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind — a fascinating new addition to these 5 essential books on language, tracing 80,000 years of evolutionary history to explore how and why we developed a mind hard-wired for culture." "Why do we get some of best ideas in the shower? Harvard University researcher and psychologist Shelley H. Carson, author of The Creative Brain, says distraction isn’t always a bad thing." 
"Becoming aware of the categories you use is a first step in freeing the mind to perceive other possibilities, other strengths in our students, other ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Choosing to label the positive rather than the negative not only changes the way you perceive the situation, but the way you interpret neutral behaviors. This opens up many possibilities that you might not have noticed before." 
"Thinking about the sheer volume of information — stories, images, videos, data — available from The New York Times can evoke a simultaneous glee and terror. It is simply impossible for readers to see them all.
The task for beta620, the Times experimental projects group, launched Deep Dive that uses the Times’ massive cache of metadata from stories to go, as the name suggests, deeper into a news event by pulling together related articles. So Deep Dive would provides readers a collection of stories relating to a topic, based on whatever person, place, event or topic of their choosing."
Via Giuseppe Mauriello 
"Neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, the founders of the exciting new discipline of NeuroMagic — and also members of the Magic Castle, Magic Circle, International Brotherhood of Magicians, and the Society of American Magicians — have convinced some of the world’s greatest magicians to allow scientists to study their techniques for tricking the brain. Magic tricks work because humans have a hardwired process of attention and awareness that is hackable—a good magician uses your mind’s own intrinsic properties against you in a form of mental jujitsu. By understanding how magicians hack our brains, we can better understand how the same cognitive tricks are at work in advertising strategy, business negotiations, and all varieties of interpersonal relations. When we understand how magic works in the mind of the spectator we will have unveiled the neural bases of consciousness itself." 
"I have been practicing structured procrastination while allowing a few blog posts to, uh, ferment a bit longer (not to mention other things I want to get done). As evidence, after reading Jonah Lehrer's recent post about unstructured procrastination - Are Distractable People More Creative? - I feel inclined to write about that, rather than finish the other partially composed posts ... not to mention other important items on my todo list. But I'll postpone writing about unstructured procrastination until I write a bit about structured procrastination. Several years ago, I encountered Stanford Philosophy Professor John Perry's inspiring account of structured procrastination, which offers a more elaborate and erudite rationalization of a practice that I'd previously justified by way of British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell's famous quote: The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." 
"Attention is a key part of human cognition, and as such, attention to our environment allows us to sort out what information is important and what is not. By sorting this information into the appropriate categories we are able to become more effective at learning and decision-making within similar environments. Over the past few years video games have gained popularity as a spectator event with eSports (electronic sports) attracting numerous professional gamers and a constantly expanding global community. Yet, despite the increasing popularity and easily obtainable data, little research has been done to explore how experts and novices differ in their interaction within a complex Graphical User Interface (GUI) environment." 
A complete list of benefits that have been scientifically linked to mindfulness. 
"Our relationships with our SmartPhones, and this wicked habit that many of us have, of walking or driving while texting or talking, holds us in a state of perpetual inattentional blindness."
"In this book, we travel inside the brains of Emily and Paul as they attempt to sort the vast quantities of information they're presented with and figure out how to prioritize, organize, and act on it. Fortunately for Emily and Paul—and for readers of Your Brain at Work—they're in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works—and more specifically, how it works in a work setting." "Articles Below are links to some of my most popular/favorite articles: 100 Things You Should Know About People |
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