March 19, 2015 • 30 mins
It may not always be polite but optimal inattention, aka willful ignoring, someone or something is a necessity. Let's explore with a study on hands and feet, not to mention our wildly distracted eyes in this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
You know, we're both writers. A lot of writing goes
into what we do here at at How Stuff Works
and Stuff to Blow your Mind. Um, and as writers
(00:23):
were always engaging in those, uh, those environmental situations where
how am I how am I going to focus on
what I'm working on here on the page and in
my mind and in that sort of unreal space between
the two, while also having to deal with vehicles roaring by,
with people walking by, people falling down, animals, weather patterns,
(00:47):
you name it. Yeah, it's a lot of wooing of
the mind. And Chekhov has said, if you look at
anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you,
it will come out of that wall. And that's the idea,
right that we're going to cover today, this idea of
optimal inattention and willful ignorance, This idea that you can
(01:07):
put a spell on your mind long enough to concentrate
on teasing up the things that will come out of
the wall. Yeah, especially that that woman in the yellow wallpaper,
ilways got to keep her push back indeed. Um. American
poet Robert Creeley, uh two thousand five Uh, he said,
(01:27):
quote the necessary environment is that which secures the artist
in the way that lets him be in the world
in a most fruitful manner, which I think is an
interesting way of thinking about it, because when we sit
down to work on something, often we think about, um,
how much we're shutting out, But there's also the attention
(01:48):
side of it. And and as someone who often works
in a coffee shop, Um, I it's like I'm purposely
going to kind of a busy, semi chaotic environment to
engage with the task that require a lot of concentration,
because it's kind of like the Goldilocks and the Three
Bears of sound or optimal sounds, right, because you know,
(02:09):
on the one hand, you could have something that was
so silent, like or Field Labs has that quietest room
in the world that shuts out sound. Too quiet, you'll
start hallucinating. Actually, you know, on the other end of
the spectrum, a bar with thumping music is way too distracting.
That's like a jackhammer on your brain. But yeah, coffee
houses have just the right amount of ambient noises to
(02:33):
allow your brain some effort to kind of crowd that out,
but have enough left over to actually deal with the
task at hand. Indeed, now we were looking at an
article titled the Importance of Place where Writers write and
Whine by Alexandria Enders in the Literary Life, and she
mentioned a number of different um famous authors and and
(02:56):
where they've written and what their approach has been, and
of course it's it's it's all over the board, like
some of the ones that a that I found interesting.
Robert Graves wrote in a room furnished only with objects
made by hand. Ben Franklin wrote in the bathtub baalzac
ate an enormous meal at around five in the morning,
and he slept on midnight, got up and wrote it
(03:17):
a small desk in his room for sixteen hours straight,
just drinking cup after cup of coffee to fuel the
frenzy brain. We also have the example of Marcel Proust,
best known for his novel Remember Remembrance of Things Past
h He decided to shrug off society and all of
the clamor that came with it. In nine he installed
(03:38):
himself in his apartment and he actually took cork, and
he lined his room, his bedroom with it, and to
keep out the ambient noises of Parisian streets below him.
And not only that, he kind of gets a little
bit o c D with his process here, and I
feel like a lot of writers do this. By the way,
(03:59):
He installed heavy blue silk curtains to keep the light out,
and he slept until late afternoon each day, at which
point he would get up, smoke some opium, and then
his housekeeper would bring him an elaborate coffee service for
him to make his own cafe a. He'd have a croissant,
he would go through his mail, read his newspaper, have
(04:20):
a second croissant, which, by the way, this is all orchestrated.
At certain times his housekeeper knew to bring in the croissant,
and it had to be from the same backery every day,
and then and only then would he begin his process
of writing in this sort of muffled womb like environment
he had created for himself to actually finish the novel
(04:41):
Remembrance of things past. Wow, Well, that's that's quite a
quite a cocktail, quite quite a recipe. He created friend
stelf there, both both chemically and environmentally, but I think
all of us can relate to that on some level,
because we've all had something we had to work on,
whether or not was a piece of fiction or something
for work or whatever, that's just required us to get
(05:04):
that sort of balance in our environment. And here's a
bit from Alan Lightman writing for The New Yorker about attention.
He says, quote, the eyes alone convey more than a
hundred billion signals to the brain every second. The ears
receive another avalanche of sounds. Then there are the fragments
of thoughts, conscious and unconscious, that race from one neuron
(05:25):
to the next. Much of this data seems random and meaningless. Indeed,
for us to function must have much of it has
to be ignored, but clearly not all. How do our
brains select the relevant data? Indeed, I mean to his
to his point, we live in a just a chaotic
storm of sensory information, but we've evolved to navigate it
(05:45):
with relative ease, weeding out the useless information and focusing
and on the crucial stuff. I mean to say nothing
of of the storm within, also dealing with the with
thoughts of past and future. We're able to ignore internal
and external distractors, but we can also inhibit competing responses
to situations in order to accomplish tasks. So yeah, the
(06:07):
key here is that that we're not processing everything. As
we've discussed in past episodes, is a great deal of
sensory computation that occurs beneath cognition, were we don't even
we're not even consciously aware that we're seeing this or
hearing that, because we're rooting it out. I think we've
talked before about the scenario of being at a party
and being able to focus in on the conversation you're having,
(06:29):
or tuning out of that conversation and listening to the
one next to you while also ignoring all the other sounds. Um,
but a lot of the sensory data that enters our
sensory system remains untouched. I mean, it basically goes one end.
It basically goes in one ear and out the other
as the saying goes. Typically, a neuron in the brain
receives hundreds or even thousands of different inputs along its
(06:52):
den rights, and yet it sends just one message out
to the next neural area. So scientists continue to study
attention to distract, and in this podcast episode, we're looking
at a couple of more recent studies that look at
both attention and willful inattention. Uh, and how we roll
with it. Yeah, And when we look at these studies,
keep in mind that's kind of metaphor when you think
(07:15):
about all that stimuli and the attention that you need. Um,
think about a chorus. All right, You have one specific
part of the brain, the interial front or cortex, that's
like the conductor, and he or she is muting one
section of voices while queuing another section to raise its
voice over the others until there's something that feels like cognition. Right,
(07:39):
this one cohesive symphony of neurons, even though there's still
the murmuring or murmurings of these random neurons underneath it.
So that's that's this kind of symphony of cognition that
we're going to explore today. Now, we'll often find ourself
in in that situation where you're torn, Betwen, paying attention
(08:01):
to two different things. It might be your math homework
versus a TV. It might be the book you're reading
versus on the beach versus the person playing volleyball on
the beach, or the motion on the beach. Um you
want to focus on one thing, but to focus on
one thing is to ignore the other. How does it
work well when your face with these two different bits
of stimuli, It triggers a conflict circuit in the brain's
(08:23):
dorsal anterior singulate cortex or deck, part of a larger
brain structure, the anterior cicular cortex that controls rational thought
and emotions. Uh, that's the inner workings of what's going on.
But we can also tell a lot from the outside, uh,
particularly looking at the eyes. In recent years, researchers have
gained even more appreciation for the importance of eye movements
(08:45):
pupil size when it comes to trying to figure out
what the brain is focusing on, how much it's focusing on,
how much computation power is being leveled at a particular task.
And in order to examine this conflict right when you're
trying to attend to attend to one thing but you're
distructed by another thing. Juke University actually had a study
(09:08):
in which Michael Platt and his team of researchers implanted
sensors into the decks of rhesis macaques. And again, the
deck is the dorsal anterior singulate cortex. Now the best
way to create conflict in the deck of monkeys is
to introduce too things that they really love and then
(09:30):
just kind of square them off. So in this case,
we're talking about juice, one thing they love, and other monkeys.
I feel like I'm the same way, like juice and monkeys.
Like really, it's a toss up. It's not juice and humans,
it's juice and monkeys exactly like, show me a monkey,
show me a juice box. I don't know which one
I want to pay attention. All right, Well, if we
were to implant a censer int your brain into this,
(09:52):
it would be very interesting to see what the results
would be. Because the researchers took the two things that
they love. They offered a juice reward if the monkey
could keep their eyes trained on a visual target on
a screen. But then they took the other thing that
they loved, other monkeys, and they flashed images of them
on the periphery of the screen. So what was even
(10:13):
more distracting is that some of the monkey faces that
they flashed on the screen exhibited specific emotions like terror,
which would be really hard for another monkey to ignore,
infect another human to ignore. Right, Yeah, basic social signal
something terrifying is happening. I should pay attention to what
that monkey is doing. Right, And again, they had a
juice reward here. If they could keep their eyes on
(10:34):
the price, they would get the juice, but a lot
of times they failed. Now the results here. The researchers
discovered a set of neurons that were active only when
monkeys were completing the task and trying to override those
distracting monkey faces, but not when faced with either of
the stimuli alone, just the juice box or just the
monkey faces. And the more active the DAK neurons were,
(10:57):
the better the monkeys were at tuning out the distracting
faces in later trials, and the pupils seemed to change
in size to compensate for how difficult the task was
constricting when the faces were hard to ignore, such as
those terrorized faces we were talking about, And the smaller
they got the pupils, the better the monkeys performed in
subsequent trial. So the key here is fight or flight.
(11:19):
The fight or flight response causes the release of the
stress hormone noor adrenaline, widening the pupils so as to
take in more sensory information for the challenge at hand.
I feel like we've talked about that in memory before.
You know, those like really stressful situations, it may at
least seem like you're taking in more sensory information well,
especially in fear as well. So Key findings that DACK
(11:41):
doesn't directly control pupils size, but it connects to other
regions of the brain that do. The researchers think that
DAC might play a role in keeping us calm in
the face in face of the demands for our attention
that might otherwise make us confused or stressed out. Now,
in a follow up study in two thousand and thirteen,
platfound that the cats performing the same I gaze task
(12:03):
did a better job of concentrating if they had inhaled oxytocin,
And the idea is that the hormone may have contributed
to better task attention because of its calming effects and
its role as a social bonding agent, Which makes you
wonder if one day classrooms will have oxytocin piped in there.
(12:26):
We're more likely this is just going to give us, uh,
these studies are just going to give us better insight
into how something like say driving while texting or even
talking on the phone while we're driving means that we're
seriously impairing the neuronal symphony that's been set forth by
the brain right to try to get us where we're going. UM.
These studies could also give us insight into attention deficit
(12:47):
hyperactivities disorder a d h D as well. And I
do love that term optimal inattention because it really it
really makes you think twice about any kind of task
you're doing, about what you're focusing on, but also what
you're shutting out. That the the optimal inattention level that
you're reaching in order to get things done. It's just
(13:08):
something that I want to put on my next assessment
I was demonstrating optimal inattention. Well, there's a two thousand,
fifteen study from Brown University that that really digs into
this that UM neuroscientists they're scanned the brain waves of
twelve volunteers while they were told that they would feel
a brief tap either on the left middle finger or
(13:32):
on their left big toe. Now, some were told to
ignore stimuli on the foot and some were told to
ignore stimuli on the hand. The researchers measured the power
and timing of different brainwave frequencies in various brain regions.
While this was going on, UH and a particular interest
in the brain wave synchronization between the part of the
(13:53):
somatosensory cortex that processes touch in the hand and the
right inferior frontal cortex tied to suppression of attention and
end action. Now, I wanted to mention that the researchers
used magneto and cephalography to scan subjects. And this is
significant because I'm like f M R I, which has
a pretty decent delay when scanning the brain. MEG is
(14:16):
more precise because it can really reveal the timing of
neural activity down to the middleseconds, so you can see
that neuronal symphony at play here. And the researchers anticipated
that they would see a greater synchrony between the somatosensory cortex,
that part of the brain again that processes touch, and
the right inferioral frontal cortex, which is again governing suppression.
(14:42):
And they wanted to control though right because I wanted
to make sure that this right inferial frontal cortex was
in fact governing, So they looked out at the frontal
cortex to make sure there wasn't a lot of activity
going on there, and they found indeed that there was not,
that it was the r I f C that was
tamping down their urges to become distracted, and they did
(15:05):
indeed find that correlation of synchrony between the sematosensory cortex
and the r I f C. Moreover, when volunteers were
simply told what was about to happen just a fraction
fraction of a second later, they saw the alpha wave
synchrony increase between those two brain regions already gearing up
(15:28):
to partner in this sort of shared process of stimuli
and reporting. And researchers found a similar spike in synchrony
when volunteers were about to report a sensation. This time though,
it was beta wave synchrony between the somati sensory cortex
and the r I f C, which is painting this
picture of these two brain processes really trying to tether
(15:51):
themselves together and create that willful ignoring. Now at this
point you might be wondering, well, what are what are
some of the possible applications of this, because you know,
we've we've been talking about you know, taps on the
hand and the foot ignoring slight sensory information like that UH.
But one application here gets into possible UH use as
(16:12):
a as a means of treating chronic pain. UM study
co authors Stephanie Jones and Katherine Kerr are actually working
with the Dr Breen Brent Dr Ben Greenberg, a professor
of psychiatry and human behavior, to explore the possible use
of non invasive transcranial altering current electrical stimulation or TAX,
(16:34):
to take advantage of this willful and attention process. Now,
TAX has previously been explored for possible applications tackling diseases
where abnormal oscillatory patterns in the brain player roles, such
as Parkinson's disease or schizophrenia, as well as in therapy
for optic nerve injuries. In this case, however, Kieren Jones
(16:55):
are curious as to whether TAX could be used to
manipulate alpha and beta waves between parts of the brain
such as the somount of sensory cortex and the right
inferior frontal the right inferior frontal cortex to suppress attention
to or even the detection of pain. So again that
(17:16):
the possibilities here in the treatment of chronic pain especially
are pretty significant well. And also pain is probably the
most distracting thing that you could throw out their rights
in some sort of environment your internal state um to
try to tamp down. So what's interesting is that researchers
also looked at pain through meditation. So if you want
(17:38):
to test out how well meditation works and blocking pain, well,
here's the study by wake Forest Baptist Medical Center which
was published in the April six and eleven edition of
the Journal of Neuroscience. And what they did is they
recruited fifteen healthy volunteers who had never ever meditated before.
They attended for twenty minute us is to learn a
(18:01):
meditation technique known as focused attention. This is a kind
of mindfulness in which people are taught to attend to
the breath and then let go of distracting thoughts and emotions.
And in fact, the meditation app that I use does
this um to great effect. It really teaches you how
to not force these thoughts away but let them just
(18:22):
recede into the background. So they learned how to do this,
and both before and after meditation training, their brain was examined.
They used something called a s l m R I
which actually captures longer duration brain processes than just regular
f M R I. And during these scans, this is
(18:42):
the great part, a pain inducing heat device was placed
on the participant's right legs and this device heated in
an area of their skin to one and twenty degrees fahrenheit,
a temperature that most people would find, you know, uncomfortable
and even painful in just like a cigar, because that's
what I know. Now, this was not like run by
(19:04):
the mafia or anything. This experiment um and they endured
this for over a five minute period. Now here are
the cool findings. The scams taken after meditation training showed
that every participant's pain rating was reduced, with decreases ranging
from eleven to and moreover, activity in the smuto sensory cortex,
(19:28):
which was processing the intensity of the heat, was really
high when scans were taken before the participants underwent meditation
training and while they were experiencing the heat. But when
participants were meditating during the scans and having the heat
applied to them, activity in this region, this pain processing
(19:49):
processing region could not be detected at all. So Fidel Zaidon,
who is a lead author of the study, wrote, we
found a big effect about a four what do you
percent reduction and pain intensity in a fifty seven percent
reduction and pain unpleasantness. Now compare that to something like
morphine or other pain relieving drugs, and they typically only
(20:12):
reduced pain ratings by about And this is even more
telling when you again realize that these are just normal
people that were essentially given a crash course in meditation,
not yogis, not Tibetan monks, just normal folks, right, not
zen level. You know, I'm gonna endure this pain and
(20:32):
suffering from my entire life, right, people who are just like, Okay,
I'll participate in this study. All right, it's okay, we're
gonna get in our time machine. And you are in
serious need of some sort of isolation so that you
can really concentrate. And uh, by the way, you're this
(20:53):
guy who happens to be named Hugo Gernsback. You're an
editor of Science and Invention magazine, and you're a pioneer
and sci fi. What do you do when you need
a little respite from the world and you need to concentrate, Well,
you cook up a little sci fi essentially a space
helmet to escape from the environment that you're working in,
(21:13):
which I imagine is filled with cigarette smoke as well.
Uh yeah, because this is again so it's probably one
of those When I was in newspapers, I would I
would hear about old environments where someone would would have
to say cigarette me while they were working on a story,
you know, where someone comes up and actually just puts
the cigarette in your mouth and lights it for you.
(21:34):
So I think it's very much a cigarette me world
that Hugo was the suffering through, that's right. And he
didn't come up with a solution, which he called the isolator. Yeah,
basically just a big sort of Darth Vadery looking contraption,
a big helmet that he would put over his head,
uh soundproof headcage essentially with its own oxygenainst oxygen supply again,
(21:57):
so you don't have to you're not distracted by all
that cigaret at smoke or what have you that you're
breathing in in your in your office. Yeah, it has
just those two round eye holes in a sort of
protruding mouth hohole area where the hose for the oxygen
comes in. And it really is just an example of
artful terror. Yeah, it kind of has a man in
(22:20):
the iron mask look to it, or some sort of
like face shackle that you would put on a suspected
warlock in a medieval setting. But hey, I mean, you
gotta do what you gotta do, and you need to
get down to business. And the hugo Grim's back was
just taking the reins there and if you want to
see a picture of it, uh the landing page for
this episode, I'll make sure to include a link at
(22:41):
the bottom. All Right, you know we've got a few
minutes here. Let's call over the robot and get through
a little listener mail. This is from Brian. He says, Hello,
Julie and Robert. I'm seventeen years old and have been
listening to your podcast since you guys were stuff from
the Science Lab, which is a pretty long time. But
I never bothered to write you, as I'm sure you
(23:01):
have enough emails and junk to go through. I love
the podcast and it inspired me to learn oodles. Is
this a word of creativity? But one problem I have,
and I hate to be a party pooper, is how
you guys seem to be almost purposely avoiding the concept
of race. While race should be unimportant in society. It
no doubt has an effect on how we treat each
(23:21):
other in modern day society. Plenty of topics you've done
could have mentioned race, but I feel like you guys
are just avoiding it. There's plenty of science, interesting science
about race and discrimination that can be talked about in
a completely objective way, the same way you talk about
homosexuality or religion. There's no need to feel like you
can't talk about the subject. People are just different colors
(23:42):
and there's nothing to feel awkward about. But I still
love the podcast and really enjoy Roberts really obscure metaphors.
My two favorite are sharks being like movie producers and
mortality being like the bubble scene from Charlie in the
Chocolate Factory. Yes, I'm not sure how to end an
e mail. I haven't sent an email in years. I'm
going to assume to end it like a letter. Brian,
(24:05):
your oldest fan who still happens to be very young.
Uh so, Brian, besides being one of our youngest and
most precocious fans, by the way, he's planning on studying
neuroscience in college. He is an excellent observer. We have
not covered race in earnest. Though it's not intentional by
any means. We've lit on it a few times with
studies that have come up from time to time. But
(24:26):
you know that's not enough. So we will be recording
a podcast called The Gordian Knot of Race that will
deal with this erroneous line of logic, like Sino color,
this idea that sometimes can gloss over the more deep
seated issues that exist today. And we'll discuss how the
unconscious and the conscious uh play out in terms of
(24:47):
racial biases that shape socio economics. And we'll also see
how that can lead to something called the school to
prison pipeline. Yeah, and if I remember correctly, we did
go We discussed in the seven S of Memory Um
episode how false memories work. We discussed a little about
racial bias in terms of how we remember things. But
(25:09):
but yeah, I'm looking forward to diving into it in earnest. Yeah,
so thank you Brian for writing that. That was really
helpful and great to hear from you. All Right, this
one comes to us from Rico. Rico says, Hi, guys,
been listening to the podcast for a while now, and
no matter the topic, I have been thoroughly enthralled until
the recent episode about babies. It wasn't the thought of
both of you eating a small child that might have
(25:31):
been better. It was the constant and repetitive reference to
babies and their features. They gave me a physical feeling
of nausea and disgust. I don't know why it affected
me in a way that the triple phobia episode never did.
This is not a complaint, just an amusing anecdote. Further,
I have a UV tattoo. A few points. Number one,
finding an artist who is willing to tattoo you in
(25:53):
UV inc has been difficult, even here in Los Angeles.
Number two, tattooing the UV inc is difficult. It has
a run any texture that my artists suggested was quote
akin to tattooing someone with lemonade. Number three, the UV
property of the ink fades. I have the clear UV
ink and after a short time it will no longer glow.
(26:13):
And number four, because of the above, I have gotten
the tattoo redone a few times, and now the appearance
is closer to scarification appreciations Rico so that, Indeed, it's
always interesting to hear about people's responses to outright disturbing
content or um unexpectedly deserving content and really great to
(26:34):
hear some uh, some actual firsthand experience on uvy tattoos. Yeah,
and we certain certainly didn't mean to, uh to scare
you away there with our descriptions of juicy babies. Um,
but you know, each of us has a tender spot
and you never know how or when it's going to
be revealed. Alright. Our last bit of listener mail here
comes from Jason says, Hi, I'm Jason. I just listen
(26:57):
to your podcast about the weight of the soul. I've
always on subjects like this interesting because I happened to
work in the health care field, specifically respiratory therapy. I
have currently worked in a major I currently work in
a major hospital, and I'm constantly exposed to the dead, dying,
the very ill. My job is literally to improve the
breathing of or breath for my patients. Early on in
(27:18):
my career, I noticed that I could tell whether a
person was alive or dead by looking at their eyes.
I'm not exactly sure where this phrase came from, but
the eyes of the window into the soul. I believe
that is how it goes, and it feels like a
very literal translation. On one hand, when we look in
to each other's eyes, we see a life force that
I still have no words to describe. On the other hand,
(27:38):
I never see any activity, just emptiness. Their eyes always
changed right before the code occurs. Example, a patient of
mine was having issues breathing. He was un a ventilator
with the trichyostomy and had been getting a continually anxious
over the last hour or so. I had been in
and out of his room that night, doing various things
to attempt to help him calm down. Although his vital
(27:58):
signs were fairly stable and his oxygenation status looked perfect,
I was still concerned. While waiting in his room, I
started to notice and acute change in his appearance and
told one of the nurses to get a doctor. As
soon as the words came out of my mouth, I
looked into his eyes, saw them glaze over, lose their light, energy,
life force, focus, and he was gone. When I say
(28:19):
go dark, I always feel that there is a light
in those eyes that goes away, such as a candle
being blown out. This was one of those cases where
at the moment of death, you could see his eyes
go dark while still talking to him. It's at this
point that I should mention that I've seen this light, energy, focus,
whatever you want to call it, come back into someone's eyes.
This is usually This usually occurs in patients with injuries
(28:41):
or illnesses that are serious enough to kill someone, but
can also be fixed if they if they do die.
It's incredibly hard to explain, but watching someone's eyes, you
can see them go from empty and glazed over to
lit up and active. I can't explain this phenomenon, but
I know this is something that not everyone talks about
or even notices, not that I know of. I thought
(29:01):
you might find this interesting, so I figured I would share.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Well. Indeed,
thank you for sharing that that firsthand account indeed of
of something that most of us never get to witness.
I mean, we're so far removed from from death in
our culture that that's certainly the moment of death is
(29:22):
often lost to us. Indeed, at Harkenspect when we were
talking about end of life robots, at one point there
was an artist who was creating a bit of AI
to help people at the end of their lives, and
we were debating about the really the necessity and the
helpfulness of that when pales in comparison to having that
(29:43):
human connection and the other person with you. Indeed, so, Jason,
thanks again for sharing. Thanks to the others as well,
and Hey, in the meantime, if you want to check
out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, that's where
you'll find all of our podcast episodes. That's where you'll
find all of our videos, our blog post as most
links out to social media accounts, and you can send
us your thoughts on this and any other podcast by
(30:05):
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
You know, we're both writers. A lot of writing goes
into what we do here at at How Stuff Works
and Stuff to Blow your Mind. Um, and as writers
(00:23):
were always engaging in those, uh, those environmental situations where
how am I how am I going to focus on
what I'm working on here on the page and in
my mind and in that sort of unreal space between
the two, while also having to deal with vehicles roaring by,
with people walking by, people falling down, animals, weather patterns,
(00:47):
you name it. Yeah, it's a lot of wooing of
the mind. And Chekhov has said, if you look at
anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you,
it will come out of that wall. And that's the idea,
right that we're going to cover today, this idea of
optimal inattention and willful ignorance, This idea that you can
(01:07):
put a spell on your mind long enough to concentrate
on teasing up the things that will come out of
the wall. Yeah, especially that that woman in the yellow wallpaper,
ilways got to keep her push back indeed. Um. American
poet Robert Creeley, uh two thousand five Uh, he said,
(01:27):
quote the necessary environment is that which secures the artist
in the way that lets him be in the world
in a most fruitful manner, which I think is an
interesting way of thinking about it, because when we sit
down to work on something, often we think about, um,
how much we're shutting out, But there's also the attention
(01:48):
side of it. And and as someone who often works
in a coffee shop, Um, I it's like I'm purposely
going to kind of a busy, semi chaotic environment to
engage with the task that require a lot of concentration,
because it's kind of like the Goldilocks and the Three
Bears of sound or optimal sounds, right, because you know,
(02:09):
on the one hand, you could have something that was
so silent, like or Field Labs has that quietest room
in the world that shuts out sound. Too quiet, you'll
start hallucinating. Actually, you know, on the other end of
the spectrum, a bar with thumping music is way too distracting.
That's like a jackhammer on your brain. But yeah, coffee
houses have just the right amount of ambient noises to
(02:33):
allow your brain some effort to kind of crowd that out,
but have enough left over to actually deal with the
task at hand. Indeed, now we were looking at an
article titled the Importance of Place where Writers write and
Whine by Alexandria Enders in the Literary Life, and she
mentioned a number of different um famous authors and and
(02:56):
where they've written and what their approach has been, and
of course it's it's it's all over the board, like
some of the ones that a that I found interesting.
Robert Graves wrote in a room furnished only with objects
made by hand. Ben Franklin wrote in the bathtub baalzac
ate an enormous meal at around five in the morning,
and he slept on midnight, got up and wrote it
(03:17):
a small desk in his room for sixteen hours straight,
just drinking cup after cup of coffee to fuel the
frenzy brain. We also have the example of Marcel Proust,
best known for his novel Remember Remembrance of Things Past
h He decided to shrug off society and all of
the clamor that came with it. In nine he installed
(03:38):
himself in his apartment and he actually took cork, and
he lined his room, his bedroom with it, and to
keep out the ambient noises of Parisian streets below him.
And not only that, he kind of gets a little
bit o c D with his process here, and I
feel like a lot of writers do this. By the way,
(03:59):
He installed heavy blue silk curtains to keep the light out,
and he slept until late afternoon each day, at which
point he would get up, smoke some opium, and then
his housekeeper would bring him an elaborate coffee service for
him to make his own cafe a. He'd have a croissant,
he would go through his mail, read his newspaper, have
(04:20):
a second croissant, which, by the way, this is all orchestrated.
At certain times his housekeeper knew to bring in the croissant,
and it had to be from the same backery every day,
and then and only then would he begin his process
of writing in this sort of muffled womb like environment
he had created for himself to actually finish the novel
(04:41):
Remembrance of things past. Wow, Well, that's that's quite a
quite a cocktail, quite quite a recipe. He created friend
stelf there, both both chemically and environmentally, but I think
all of us can relate to that on some level,
because we've all had something we had to work on,
whether or not was a piece of fiction or something
for work or whatever, that's just required us to get
(05:04):
that sort of balance in our environment. And here's a
bit from Alan Lightman writing for The New Yorker about attention.
He says, quote, the eyes alone convey more than a
hundred billion signals to the brain every second. The ears
receive another avalanche of sounds. Then there are the fragments
of thoughts, conscious and unconscious, that race from one neuron
(05:25):
to the next. Much of this data seems random and meaningless. Indeed,
for us to function must have much of it has
to be ignored, but clearly not all. How do our
brains select the relevant data? Indeed, I mean to his
to his point, we live in a just a chaotic
storm of sensory information, but we've evolved to navigate it
(05:45):
with relative ease, weeding out the useless information and focusing
and on the crucial stuff. I mean to say nothing
of of the storm within, also dealing with the with
thoughts of past and future. We're able to ignore internal
and external distractors, but we can also inhibit competing responses
to situations in order to accomplish tasks. So yeah, the
(06:07):
key here is that that we're not processing everything. As
we've discussed in past episodes, is a great deal of
sensory computation that occurs beneath cognition, were we don't even
we're not even consciously aware that we're seeing this or
hearing that, because we're rooting it out. I think we've
talked before about the scenario of being at a party
and being able to focus in on the conversation you're having,
(06:29):
or tuning out of that conversation and listening to the
one next to you while also ignoring all the other sounds. Um,
but a lot of the sensory data that enters our
sensory system remains untouched. I mean, it basically goes one end.
It basically goes in one ear and out the other
as the saying goes. Typically, a neuron in the brain
receives hundreds or even thousands of different inputs along its
(06:52):
den rights, and yet it sends just one message out
to the next neural area. So scientists continue to study
attention to distract, and in this podcast episode, we're looking
at a couple of more recent studies that look at
both attention and willful inattention. Uh, and how we roll
with it. Yeah, And when we look at these studies,
keep in mind that's kind of metaphor when you think
(07:15):
about all that stimuli and the attention that you need. Um,
think about a chorus. All right, You have one specific
part of the brain, the interial front or cortex, that's
like the conductor, and he or she is muting one
section of voices while queuing another section to raise its
voice over the others until there's something that feels like cognition. Right,
(07:39):
this one cohesive symphony of neurons, even though there's still
the murmuring or murmurings of these random neurons underneath it.
So that's that's this kind of symphony of cognition that
we're going to explore today. Now, we'll often find ourself
in in that situation where you're torn, Betwen, paying attention
(08:01):
to two different things. It might be your math homework
versus a TV. It might be the book you're reading
versus on the beach versus the person playing volleyball on
the beach, or the motion on the beach. Um you
want to focus on one thing, but to focus on
one thing is to ignore the other. How does it
work well when your face with these two different bits
of stimuli, It triggers a conflict circuit in the brain's
(08:23):
dorsal anterior singulate cortex or deck, part of a larger
brain structure, the anterior cicular cortex that controls rational thought
and emotions. Uh, that's the inner workings of what's going on.
But we can also tell a lot from the outside, uh,
particularly looking at the eyes. In recent years, researchers have
gained even more appreciation for the importance of eye movements
(08:45):
pupil size when it comes to trying to figure out
what the brain is focusing on, how much it's focusing on,
how much computation power is being leveled at a particular task.
And in order to examine this conflict right when you're
trying to attend to attend to one thing but you're
distructed by another thing. Juke University actually had a study
(09:08):
in which Michael Platt and his team of researchers implanted
sensors into the decks of rhesis macaques. And again, the
deck is the dorsal anterior singulate cortex. Now the best
way to create conflict in the deck of monkeys is
to introduce too things that they really love and then
(09:30):
just kind of square them off. So in this case,
we're talking about juice, one thing they love, and other monkeys.
I feel like I'm the same way, like juice and monkeys.
Like really, it's a toss up. It's not juice and humans,
it's juice and monkeys exactly like, show me a monkey,
show me a juice box. I don't know which one
I want to pay attention. All right, Well, if we
were to implant a censer int your brain into this,
(09:52):
it would be very interesting to see what the results
would be. Because the researchers took the two things that
they love. They offered a juice reward if the monkey
could keep their eyes trained on a visual target on
a screen. But then they took the other thing that
they loved, other monkeys, and they flashed images of them
on the periphery of the screen. So what was even
(10:13):
more distracting is that some of the monkey faces that
they flashed on the screen exhibited specific emotions like terror,
which would be really hard for another monkey to ignore,
infect another human to ignore. Right, Yeah, basic social signal
something terrifying is happening. I should pay attention to what
that monkey is doing. Right, And again, they had a
juice reward here. If they could keep their eyes on
(10:34):
the price, they would get the juice, but a lot
of times they failed. Now the results here. The researchers
discovered a set of neurons that were active only when
monkeys were completing the task and trying to override those
distracting monkey faces, but not when faced with either of
the stimuli alone, just the juice box or just the
monkey faces. And the more active the DAK neurons were,
(10:57):
the better the monkeys were at tuning out the distracting
faces in later trials, and the pupils seemed to change
in size to compensate for how difficult the task was
constricting when the faces were hard to ignore, such as
those terrorized faces we were talking about, And the smaller
they got the pupils, the better the monkeys performed in
subsequent trial. So the key here is fight or flight.
(11:19):
The fight or flight response causes the release of the
stress hormone noor adrenaline, widening the pupils so as to
take in more sensory information for the challenge at hand.
I feel like we've talked about that in memory before.
You know, those like really stressful situations, it may at
least seem like you're taking in more sensory information well,
especially in fear as well. So Key findings that DACK
(11:41):
doesn't directly control pupils size, but it connects to other
regions of the brain that do. The researchers think that
DAC might play a role in keeping us calm in
the face in face of the demands for our attention
that might otherwise make us confused or stressed out. Now,
in a follow up study in two thousand and thirteen,
platfound that the cats performing the same I gaze task
(12:03):
did a better job of concentrating if they had inhaled oxytocin,
And the idea is that the hormone may have contributed
to better task attention because of its calming effects and
its role as a social bonding agent, Which makes you
wonder if one day classrooms will have oxytocin piped in there.
(12:26):
We're more likely this is just going to give us, uh,
these studies are just going to give us better insight
into how something like say driving while texting or even
talking on the phone while we're driving means that we're
seriously impairing the neuronal symphony that's been set forth by
the brain right to try to get us where we're going. UM.
These studies could also give us insight into attention deficit
(12:47):
hyperactivities disorder a d h D as well. And I
do love that term optimal inattention because it really it
really makes you think twice about any kind of task
you're doing, about what you're focusing on, but also what
you're shutting out. That the the optimal inattention level that
you're reaching in order to get things done. It's just
(13:08):
something that I want to put on my next assessment
I was demonstrating optimal inattention. Well, there's a two thousand,
fifteen study from Brown University that that really digs into
this that UM neuroscientists they're scanned the brain waves of
twelve volunteers while they were told that they would feel
a brief tap either on the left middle finger or
(13:32):
on their left big toe. Now, some were told to
ignore stimuli on the foot and some were told to
ignore stimuli on the hand. The researchers measured the power
and timing of different brainwave frequencies in various brain regions.
While this was going on, UH and a particular interest
in the brain wave synchronization between the part of the
(13:53):
somatosensory cortex that processes touch in the hand and the
right inferior frontal cortex tied to suppression of attention and
end action. Now, I wanted to mention that the researchers
used magneto and cephalography to scan subjects. And this is
significant because I'm like f M R I, which has
a pretty decent delay when scanning the brain. MEG is
(14:16):
more precise because it can really reveal the timing of
neural activity down to the middleseconds, so you can see
that neuronal symphony at play here. And the researchers anticipated
that they would see a greater synchrony between the somatosensory cortex,
that part of the brain again that processes touch, and
the right inferioral frontal cortex, which is again governing suppression.
(14:42):
And they wanted to control though right because I wanted
to make sure that this right inferial frontal cortex was
in fact governing, So they looked out at the frontal
cortex to make sure there wasn't a lot of activity
going on there, and they found indeed that there was not,
that it was the r I f C that was
tamping down their urges to become distracted, and they did
(15:05):
indeed find that correlation of synchrony between the sematosensory cortex
and the r I f C. Moreover, when volunteers were
simply told what was about to happen just a fraction
fraction of a second later, they saw the alpha wave
synchrony increase between those two brain regions already gearing up
(15:28):
to partner in this sort of shared process of stimuli
and reporting. And researchers found a similar spike in synchrony
when volunteers were about to report a sensation. This time though,
it was beta wave synchrony between the somati sensory cortex
and the r I f C, which is painting this
picture of these two brain processes really trying to tether
(15:51):
themselves together and create that willful ignoring. Now at this
point you might be wondering, well, what are what are
some of the possible applications of this, because you know,
we've we've been talking about you know, taps on the
hand and the foot ignoring slight sensory information like that UH.
But one application here gets into possible UH use as
(16:12):
a as a means of treating chronic pain. UM study
co authors Stephanie Jones and Katherine Kerr are actually working
with the Dr Breen Brent Dr Ben Greenberg, a professor
of psychiatry and human behavior, to explore the possible use
of non invasive transcranial altering current electrical stimulation or TAX,
(16:34):
to take advantage of this willful and attention process. Now,
TAX has previously been explored for possible applications tackling diseases
where abnormal oscillatory patterns in the brain player roles, such
as Parkinson's disease or schizophrenia, as well as in therapy
for optic nerve injuries. In this case, however, Kieren Jones
(16:55):
are curious as to whether TAX could be used to
manipulate alpha and beta waves between parts of the brain
such as the somount of sensory cortex and the right
inferior frontal the right inferior frontal cortex to suppress attention
to or even the detection of pain. So again that
(17:16):
the possibilities here in the treatment of chronic pain especially
are pretty significant well. And also pain is probably the
most distracting thing that you could throw out their rights
in some sort of environment your internal state um to
try to tamp down. So what's interesting is that researchers
also looked at pain through meditation. So if you want
(17:38):
to test out how well meditation works and blocking pain, well,
here's the study by wake Forest Baptist Medical Center which
was published in the April six and eleven edition of
the Journal of Neuroscience. And what they did is they
recruited fifteen healthy volunteers who had never ever meditated before.
They attended for twenty minute us is to learn a
(18:01):
meditation technique known as focused attention. This is a kind
of mindfulness in which people are taught to attend to
the breath and then let go of distracting thoughts and emotions.
And in fact, the meditation app that I use does
this um to great effect. It really teaches you how
to not force these thoughts away but let them just
(18:22):
recede into the background. So they learned how to do this,
and both before and after meditation training, their brain was examined.
They used something called a s l m R I
which actually captures longer duration brain processes than just regular
f M R I. And during these scans, this is
(18:42):
the great part, a pain inducing heat device was placed
on the participant's right legs and this device heated in
an area of their skin to one and twenty degrees fahrenheit,
a temperature that most people would find, you know, uncomfortable
and even painful in just like a cigar, because that's
what I know. Now, this was not like run by
(19:04):
the mafia or anything. This experiment um and they endured
this for over a five minute period. Now here are
the cool findings. The scams taken after meditation training showed
that every participant's pain rating was reduced, with decreases ranging
from eleven to and moreover, activity in the smuto sensory cortex,
(19:28):
which was processing the intensity of the heat, was really
high when scans were taken before the participants underwent meditation
training and while they were experiencing the heat. But when
participants were meditating during the scans and having the heat
applied to them, activity in this region, this pain processing
(19:49):
processing region could not be detected at all. So Fidel Zaidon,
who is a lead author of the study, wrote, we
found a big effect about a four what do you
percent reduction and pain intensity in a fifty seven percent
reduction and pain unpleasantness. Now compare that to something like
morphine or other pain relieving drugs, and they typically only
(20:12):
reduced pain ratings by about And this is even more
telling when you again realize that these are just normal
people that were essentially given a crash course in meditation,
not yogis, not Tibetan monks, just normal folks, right, not
zen level. You know, I'm gonna endure this pain and
(20:32):
suffering from my entire life, right, people who are just like, Okay,
I'll participate in this study. All right, it's okay, we're
gonna get in our time machine. And you are in
serious need of some sort of isolation so that you
can really concentrate. And uh, by the way, you're this
(20:53):
guy who happens to be named Hugo Gernsback. You're an
editor of Science and Invention magazine, and you're a pioneer
and sci fi. What do you do when you need
a little respite from the world and you need to concentrate, Well,
you cook up a little sci fi essentially a space
helmet to escape from the environment that you're working in,
(21:13):
which I imagine is filled with cigarette smoke as well.
Uh yeah, because this is again so it's probably one
of those When I was in newspapers, I would I
would hear about old environments where someone would would have
to say cigarette me while they were working on a story,
you know, where someone comes up and actually just puts
the cigarette in your mouth and lights it for you.
(21:34):
So I think it's very much a cigarette me world
that Hugo was the suffering through, that's right. And he
didn't come up with a solution, which he called the isolator. Yeah,
basically just a big sort of Darth Vadery looking contraption,
a big helmet that he would put over his head,
uh soundproof headcage essentially with its own oxygenainst oxygen supply again,
(21:57):
so you don't have to you're not distracted by all
that cigaret at smoke or what have you that you're
breathing in in your in your office. Yeah, it has
just those two round eye holes in a sort of
protruding mouth hohole area where the hose for the oxygen
comes in. And it really is just an example of
artful terror. Yeah, it kind of has a man in
(22:20):
the iron mask look to it, or some sort of
like face shackle that you would put on a suspected
warlock in a medieval setting. But hey, I mean, you
gotta do what you gotta do, and you need to
get down to business. And the hugo Grim's back was
just taking the reins there and if you want to
see a picture of it, uh the landing page for
this episode, I'll make sure to include a link at
(22:41):
the bottom. All Right, you know we've got a few
minutes here. Let's call over the robot and get through
a little listener mail. This is from Brian. He says, Hello,
Julie and Robert. I'm seventeen years old and have been
listening to your podcast since you guys were stuff from
the Science Lab, which is a pretty long time. But
I never bothered to write you, as I'm sure you
(23:01):
have enough emails and junk to go through. I love
the podcast and it inspired me to learn oodles. Is
this a word of creativity? But one problem I have,
and I hate to be a party pooper, is how
you guys seem to be almost purposely avoiding the concept
of race. While race should be unimportant in society. It
no doubt has an effect on how we treat each
(23:21):
other in modern day society. Plenty of topics you've done
could have mentioned race, but I feel like you guys
are just avoiding it. There's plenty of science, interesting science
about race and discrimination that can be talked about in
a completely objective way, the same way you talk about
homosexuality or religion. There's no need to feel like you
can't talk about the subject. People are just different colors
(23:42):
and there's nothing to feel awkward about. But I still
love the podcast and really enjoy Roberts really obscure metaphors.
My two favorite are sharks being like movie producers and
mortality being like the bubble scene from Charlie in the
Chocolate Factory. Yes, I'm not sure how to end an
e mail. I haven't sent an email in years. I'm
going to assume to end it like a letter. Brian,
(24:05):
your oldest fan who still happens to be very young.
Uh so, Brian, besides being one of our youngest and
most precocious fans, by the way, he's planning on studying
neuroscience in college. He is an excellent observer. We have
not covered race in earnest. Though it's not intentional by
any means. We've lit on it a few times with
studies that have come up from time to time. But
(24:26):
you know that's not enough. So we will be recording
a podcast called The Gordian Knot of Race that will
deal with this erroneous line of logic, like Sino color,
this idea that sometimes can gloss over the more deep
seated issues that exist today. And we'll discuss how the
unconscious and the conscious uh play out in terms of
(24:47):
racial biases that shape socio economics. And we'll also see
how that can lead to something called the school to
prison pipeline. Yeah, and if I remember correctly, we did
go We discussed in the seven S of Memory Um
episode how false memories work. We discussed a little about
racial bias in terms of how we remember things. But
(25:09):
but yeah, I'm looking forward to diving into it in earnest. Yeah,
so thank you Brian for writing that. That was really
helpful and great to hear from you. All Right, this
one comes to us from Rico. Rico says, Hi, guys,
been listening to the podcast for a while now, and
no matter the topic, I have been thoroughly enthralled until
the recent episode about babies. It wasn't the thought of
both of you eating a small child that might have
(25:31):
been better. It was the constant and repetitive reference to
babies and their features. They gave me a physical feeling
of nausea and disgust. I don't know why it affected
me in a way that the triple phobia episode never did.
This is not a complaint, just an amusing anecdote. Further,
I have a UV tattoo. A few points. Number one,
finding an artist who is willing to tattoo you in
(25:53):
UV inc has been difficult, even here in Los Angeles.
Number two, tattooing the UV inc is difficult. It has
a run any texture that my artists suggested was quote
akin to tattooing someone with lemonade. Number three, the UV
property of the ink fades. I have the clear UV
ink and after a short time it will no longer glow.
(26:13):
And number four, because of the above, I have gotten
the tattoo redone a few times, and now the appearance
is closer to scarification appreciations Rico so that, Indeed, it's
always interesting to hear about people's responses to outright disturbing
content or um unexpectedly deserving content and really great to
(26:34):
hear some uh, some actual firsthand experience on uvy tattoos. Yeah,
and we certain certainly didn't mean to, uh to scare
you away there with our descriptions of juicy babies. Um,
but you know, each of us has a tender spot
and you never know how or when it's going to
be revealed. Alright. Our last bit of listener mail here
comes from Jason says, Hi, I'm Jason. I just listen
(26:57):
to your podcast about the weight of the soul. I've
always on subjects like this interesting because I happened to
work in the health care field, specifically respiratory therapy. I
have currently worked in a major I currently work in
a major hospital, and I'm constantly exposed to the dead, dying,
the very ill. My job is literally to improve the
breathing of or breath for my patients. Early on in
(27:18):
my career, I noticed that I could tell whether a
person was alive or dead by looking at their eyes.
I'm not exactly sure where this phrase came from, but
the eyes of the window into the soul. I believe
that is how it goes, and it feels like a
very literal translation. On one hand, when we look in
to each other's eyes, we see a life force that
I still have no words to describe. On the other hand,
(27:38):
I never see any activity, just emptiness. Their eyes always
changed right before the code occurs. Example, a patient of
mine was having issues breathing. He was un a ventilator
with the trichyostomy and had been getting a continually anxious
over the last hour or so. I had been in
and out of his room that night, doing various things
to attempt to help him calm down. Although his vital
(27:58):
signs were fairly stable and his oxygenation status looked perfect,
I was still concerned. While waiting in his room, I
started to notice and acute change in his appearance and
told one of the nurses to get a doctor. As
soon as the words came out of my mouth, I
looked into his eyes, saw them glaze over, lose their light, energy,
life force, focus, and he was gone. When I say
(28:19):
go dark, I always feel that there is a light
in those eyes that goes away, such as a candle
being blown out. This was one of those cases where
at the moment of death, you could see his eyes
go dark while still talking to him. It's at this
point that I should mention that I've seen this light, energy, focus,
whatever you want to call it, come back into someone's eyes.
This is usually This usually occurs in patients with injuries
(28:41):
or illnesses that are serious enough to kill someone, but
can also be fixed if they if they do die.
It's incredibly hard to explain, but watching someone's eyes, you
can see them go from empty and glazed over to
lit up and active. I can't explain this phenomenon, but
I know this is something that not everyone talks about
or even notices, not that I know of. I thought
(29:01):
you might find this interesting, so I figured I would share.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Well. Indeed,
thank you for sharing that that firsthand account indeed of
of something that most of us never get to witness.
I mean, we're so far removed from from death in
our culture that that's certainly the moment of death is
(29:22):
often lost to us. Indeed, at Harkenspect when we were
talking about end of life robots, at one point there
was an artist who was creating a bit of AI
to help people at the end of their lives, and
we were debating about the really the necessity and the
helpfulness of that when pales in comparison to having that
(29:43):
human connection and the other person with you. Indeed, so, Jason,
thanks again for sharing. Thanks to the others as well,
and Hey, in the meantime, if you want to check
out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, that's where
you'll find all of our podcast episodes. That's where you'll
find all of our videos, our blog post as most
links out to social media accounts, and you can send
us your thoughts on this and any other podcast by
(30:05):
emailing us at blur the Mind how stuff works dot com.
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