Thepeople who are distracted by a flyand they can barely keep their attention on one thing, they can blame itto a group of neurons of the superior parietal lobe, according to a study published in the journalJournal of Neuroscience. Specifically, the results reveal thatmore distracted people tend to have a greater volume of gray matter in that brain region, something apparently contradictory, since in theory having more neurons should help to maintain concentration.
In the age of information overload, “attention is a challenge,” says Ryota Kanai, a researcher at University College London and a co-author of the study. But some people are especially susceptible to being distracted by looking at email, theirTime LineTwitter or Facebook wall. To find out if there is any anatomical basis for the “cluelessness,” Kanai studied the brains of 145 subjects who had previously filled out a questionnaire to estimate their tendency to be distracted in everyday life – having mental lapses, forgetting what they bought when they arrived to the supermarket or where they have parked, etc.-. The results showed that there were certain brain differences that were related to the ability to maintain attention. Specifically, the greater the number of neurons in the superior parietal lobe of the left hemisphere of a subject, the greater their tendency to be distracted.
The hypothesis used by Kanai and his colleagues is thatas the brain matures some neurons and nerve connections are destroyed, and this process helps control attention. According to this idea, people with more gray matter in the cerebral cortex would also be a little more “childish” and, consequently, somewhat more distracted.
