THAT'S THE WHY:Do you often go into a supermarket to buy a product but become distracted while there and end up walking right past it?
Some people seem to be inherently more distractible than others, but why is that?
Research on twins suggests that distractibility has a genetic component, and that prompted scientists to look at whether brain structures might be connected with the trait.
Using the indelicately named Cognitive Failures Questionnaire, a recent study asked 145 healthy adults to work through a list of items thatassess and index distractibility.
The researchers also carried out MRI scans of the participants’ brains.
And when they matched the results up, they found that the self-reported distractibility in everyday life could predict the density of grey matter
in a part of the brain called the left superior parietal cortex (SPL) – having a larger density in the region was linked with being more distractible.
Also, if they disrupted the function of this part of the brain using magnetic stimulation, it increased the susceptibility to distraction.
The results suggest the left SPL is involved in top-down attentional control to avoid distraction, according to the authors of the study, which was published in the Journal of Neuroscienceearlier this year.
Interestingly, the same group of researchers at University College London also recently looked at the brains of individuals who declared their political attitudes, and the scientists could spot differences in brain structures between liberals and conservatives. But I’m wandering off topic here . . .
