Members in the Media
From: The New York Times

Training the Mind Not to Wander

The New York Times:

A wandering mind can lead to accidents and lost productivity. Now, a study finds that real-time brain monitoring can be used to help people regain focus.

Neuroscientists at Princeton University monitored the brain activity of students who were asked to perform a repetitive task that required close attention. While lying inside an functional magnetic resonance imaging, or f.M.R.I., machine, the students were shown a series of pictures of human faces superimposed over scenery. They were told to press a button when they saw a particular kind of face (female or male) or when they saw a particular kind of scenery (inside or outside).

The test was designed to mirror the kind of everyday task from which one could easily lose focus, said Nicholas B. Turk-Browne, the lead author of the study. “What makes this a study of attention is they needed to select the image that’s relevant and ignore the other part,” he said.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

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