Posts from — April 2005

As Neil Postman observed in Amusing Ourselves to Death, we are in an age where we are inundated with information. Postman states that the average Sunday edition of the New York Times contains more information than a person in the 1700s got in a lifetime.

Now, The Seattle times reports We’re shooting through technological rapids that have opened doors and changed the dynamic of work, how we communicate and live, and sometimes even think. All these tools have made our lives easier in many ways. But they’re also stirring deep unease. Some are concerned that the need for speed is shrinking our attention spans, prompting our search for answers to take the mile-wide-but-inch-deep route and settling us into a rhythm of constant interruption in which deadlines are relentless and tasks are never quite finished.

Scientists call this phenomenon “cognitive overload,” and say it encompasses the modern-day angst of stress, multitasking, distraction and data flurries.

In fact, multitasking — a computing term that involves doing, or trying to do, more than one thing at once — has cemented itself into our daily lives and is intensely studied. Research has shown it to be consistently counterproductive, often foolish, unhealthy in the long run, and in the case of gabbing on the cell phone while driving, relatively dangerous. Yet it is also expected, encouraged and basically essential. This is such a topic of study that it has sprouted a number of terms, from “online compulsive disorder” to “data smog.” Two Harvard professors see evidence of what they call “pseudo-attention deficit disorder” — shorter attention spans influenced by technology and the constant waves of information washing over us. When the brain gets excited over some rapid data and is stimulated, it releases a “dopamine squirt,” they say.

WE ARE WHAT WE THINK “We have so many options, reward centers that we never had before,” says John Ratey, who teaches at Harvard and is a psychiatrist specializing in attention deficit disorder. “I think that’s why we’re seeing more of this. There are more demands on our attention and less training for us to stop and take it all in. We seem to be amazing ourselves to death.”

This is of particular interest when it comes to children who have grown up in the fast lane where Web pages that take more than five seconds to load are considered lame. Is the speed and ease compromising their attention spans? Their perspective? Their humanity? Even their work ethic? Or are we just threatened that they will lap us old fogies?

Little is understood about the Information Age’s effect on this generation, but it is a burgeoning area of research. Ratey wonders if kids would read “The Red Badge of Courage” to complete their homework or simply comb the Internet for essays explaining it all for them.

Scientific American, Ocotober 2004 reports that learning retunes the brain, so that more cells respond best to behaviorally important sounds. The researchers also maintain that training responses also depend on the experiences and training of the listener. Even a little training can quickly alter the brain’s reactions. This contradicts previous brain theory that held until about 10 years ago that tuning was “fixed” for each cell in the auditory cortex. The scientists’ studies on contour, however, made them suspect that cell tuning might be altered during learning so that certain cells become extra sensitive to sounds that attract attention and are stored in memory. The retuning was remarkably durable: it became stronger over time without additional training and lasted for months. These findings initiated a growing body of research indicating that one way the brain stores the learned importance of a stimulus is by devoting more brain cells to the processing of that stimulus.

While this research confirms current knowledge about brain reorganization (neuroplasticity) during learning, their research also found that “the pattern of a melody matters: processing in the auditory system is not like the simple relaying of sound in a telephone or stereo system.” For many years scientists have held that certain sites are responsible for reading, listening, etc. But researchers have found that listening, especially to music, “But in recent years we have begun to gain a firmer understanding of where and how music is processed in the brain, which should lay a foundation for answering evolutionary questions. Collectively, studies of patients with brain injuries and imaging of healthy individuals have unexpectedly uncovered no specialized brain “center” for music. Rather music engages many areas distributed throughout the brain, including those that are normally involved in other kinds of cognition. The active areas vary with the person’s individual experiences and musical training. The ear has the fewest sensory cells of any sensory organ–3,500 inner hair cells occupy the ear versus 100 million photoreceptors in the eye. Yet our mental response to music is remarkably adaptable; even a little study can “retune” the way the brain handles musical inputs.”

Localization is the foundation for fMRI and other imaging techniques in that many fMri proponents claim to be able to locate 6 – 8 different types of ADHD via analysis of these scans. If non-localization is true, i.e., the brain processes using a variety of modalities, subcortical as well as cortical tissue, then the superficial images exposed via fMRI may be a dead end as they can only reveal tiny pieces of a very large puzzle.

The bottom line is: The brain can be retrained to overcome learning disabilities, cognitive impairments, ADHD, etc. What we now know is that this is done over a vast network in the brain that encompasses many other minor and major networks. You could think of retraining as the confluence of several telephone companies coming together to in order to overcome a limitation. Each has its own network and substructure but can become bigger and stronger (overcoming their respective limitations) by merging with the other network (think AT&T and Cingular). In the brain, this is done over a wide area of networks – not locally in distinct surface areas as superficial brain imaging might indicate.

Play Attention CEO to Speak at NASA Benefits of Space Exploration Brought to Earth

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina April 13, 2005

WCU graduate, Peter Freer, Founder and CEO of Unique Logic and Technology, Inc. will speak at the National Space Society 2005 International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC. His presentation is entitled, “From Outer Space to Inner Space: Using NASA Technology to Increase Attention and Cognitive Function.”

Freer holds a Master’s degree in education from Western Carolina University. He is a former educator in both Jackson County Schools and Asheville City Schools in NC. During his tenure as a teacher, Freer encountered an increasing number of AD/HD students. Combining NASA research and his background in educational computer programming, he developed Play Attention®, the nations leading educational attention training system used in schools, homes, and professional offices.

NASA currently uses feedback technology to increase astronaut and pilot attention during flight simulator training. Freer augmented this technology to accommodate educational needs and received four patents for his pioneering efforts. Freer adapted sophisticated instrumentation to fit the personal computer and then incorporated a sensor lined space-age helmet to process brain output and translate it onto a computer screen. This new learning system allows control of game action via the powers of concentration alone – no keyboard, no mouse, no joystick! Users practice paying attention by making video games respond to their brainpower at home or under the guidance of a teacher at school.

 Just as NASA astronauts and pilots train to increase attention, Play Attention literally teaches the user to increase concentration, complete tasks, visual tracking, short-term memory, and to filer out distractions – all the skills necessary to be successful in the classroom.    The learner directly observes his mind’s ability to command the computer screen in real-time.

 ”Play Attention,” says Freer, “is popular with students because of its entertaining game format.  It keeps the student engrossed while he or she practices reaching new levels of concentration.”  The inventor adds, “The system is success based and includes behavioral shaping techniques.”

 He further notes studies demonstrate that children trained on Play Attention experience a greater sense of self-esteem, enhanced social interactions, and improved grades as a result of their own newly developed abilities.

 Freer says that, “Both NASA and Play Attention have proven that feedback-based learning empowers individuals to deal with their personal challenges by learning how to use their own resources. This produces a sense of accomplishment, self-worth, and success. We owe NASA a great debt.”

 The National Space Society 2005 International Space Development Conference is scheduled for May 19 – 22 at the Sheraton National Hotel Arlington, Washington, DC.  The conference theme, “Your Ticket to Space” refers to the new opportunities for citizens to participate in space exploration and realize the benefits on earth.

As I’ve qualitatively interviewed hundreds of people that I meet at conferences and seminars, I’ve found one underlying current especially relevant to the pace of life right now: most of us feel overwhelmed. We are exposed to information from cell phones, faxes, email, TV, radio, pagers, PDAs, print media, computers, the Internet, etc. This constant bombardment results in a feeling of information overload. It’s probably the brain’s natural response to being inundated by information non-related to its survival as most of the information transmitted to us is fairly useless; it’s throw-away, disposable information. Most people I’ve interviewed say that they cannot even recall what they received in their email or heard on the news the previous week. Throw away, disposable information.

According to USA Today in an article entitled, “So much media, so little attention span“, children that are exposed to 8½ hours of TV, video games, computers and other media a day — often at once — may be losing the ability to concentrate. The article questions, “Are their developing brains becoming hard-wired to “multi-task lite” rather than learn the focused critical thinking needed for a democracy?

These troubling questions are raised by a Kaiser Family Foundation media study this month, says educational psychologist David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family, a Minneapolis non-profit. Even more troubling is the answer: We don’t know, Walsh and other experts in the field say.”

As I noted previously, adults feel inundated by information. Children respond differently. School psychologists and teachers typically report that children have a more difficult time attending now than every before. Children have a more difficult time staying still and listening if the presentation is not highly entertaining.

“The problem intensifies after third grade, when harder course work requires children to concentrate, adds Susan Ratteree, who supervises other public-school psychologists in suburban New Orleans. Diagnoses of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) “have gone through the roof,” she says. Though the disorder is more recognized these days, children seem to be different too, “and many teachers think the fast-paced media is having an effect.”

Children are more attuned to distractions around them. “They attend to everything — the air vents creaking, someone talking. They bounce from task to task. Teachers here say kids have more trouble getting organized, and their attention spans are not as good as they used to be,” says school psychologist Tamara Waters-Wheeler of the Bismarck-Mandan, N.D., public schools.

Studies with college students and adults show that the brain doesn’t work as well when it focuses on more than one task, Walsh says. If the challenge demands a lot of attention, mental performance is particularly poor. But he says there are no such studies on today’s kids as they multi-task with new media — instant- messaging, plugged into an iPod and doing homework at the same time.”

Science Daily from a study that appeared in the May 13, 1999, issue of the journal Nature(1), relates multitasking behaviors to the prefrontal cortex. “Investigators have mapped a region of the brain responsible for a certain kind of multitasking behavior, the uniquely human ability to perform several separate tasks consecutively while keeping the goals of each task in mind. Using imaging technology, scientists from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) found that a specific type of multitasking behavior, called branching, can be mapped to a certain region of the brain that is especially well developed in humans compared to other primates.”

“The results of this study suggest that the anterior prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that is most developed in humans, mediates the ability to depart temporarily from a main task in order to explore alternative tasks before returning to the main task at the departed point,” says Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., Chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the NINDS and a co-author of the study.

“We believe that this finding is important because branching processes appear to play a key role in human cognition,” says Etienne Koechlin, Ph.D., also of the NINDS Cognitive Neuroscience Section and a co-author of the study. “In everyday life, we often need to interrupt an ongoing task to respond to external events and we all experience how demanding it is to react to these events while keeping our minds on the original task.”

According to previous studies, humans may be the only species capable of performing branching, which involves keeping a goal in mind over time (working memory) while at the same time being able to change focus among tasks (attentional resource allocation). For example, people who are interrupted by a phone call while reading must be able to keep in mind the memory of what they were reading just before talking on the phone. Once the phone call is over, they should be able to return to the last sentence read and continue reading.”

Almost everyone shifts attention from one task to the next during a normal day. ADHD people shift attention more so than others, but have lesser ability to focus for very long on mundane or ordinary levels of stimulation.

It is important to put the following question: how much can we shift our attention before the tasks at hand do not get completed or begin to suffer in performance. Given our differences as a species, this will likely vary among the population and the complexity of the tasks.

Recent research issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society,>indicates that our brains weren’t made to multitask. A splendid example is driving while speaking on a cell phone. Some states have outlawed this behavior due to increased accident rates. It seems that we are far too distracted to focus on driving if we’re talking or dialing.

The researchers explain the multi-tasking/distracting phenomenon using two terms: “passive queuing” and “active monitoring.” Passive queuing implies that new incoming information has to line up for a chance at being processed – a queue – just as you wait in a queue in the doctor’s office. A focal point in the brain receives and processes the information one piece at a time.

Active monitoring (people who swear they can multi-task) suggests that the brain can process two things at once – it just needs to use a complicated mechanism to keep the two processes separate.

Researchers from MIT think that the brain works by passive queuing, the non-multi- tasking approach. “…in a study to be published in the June issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society, [researchers] examined the brain activity involved in multitasking. They gave people two simple tasks. Task one was identifying shapes, and for some subjects, task two was identifying letters, for others it was identifying colors. The subjects were forced to switch from one task to the other in either one and a half seconds or one tenth of a second. When they had to switch faster, subjects would take as much as twice as long to respond than when switching more slowly.

Using MRI technology, Jiang, Saxe and Kanwisher examined subjects’ brain activity while performing these tasks. They observed no increase in the sort of activity that would be involved in keeping two thought processes separate when subjects had to switch faster. This suggests that there are no complicated mechanisms that allow people to perform two tasks at once. Instead, we have to perform the next task only after the last one is finished.”

It is logical to ask then, if we expose ourselves to enough high-input stimulation (media, computers, cell phones, etc.) will this rewire the brain to accommodate the input? The USA Today article suggests that some research on media-exposure “suggests that children’s brains might be changing so they can juggle and concentrate better than their elders.

Scores on intelligence tests have been steadily rising since the 1940s, says University of Utah neuropsychologist Sam Goldstein. The tests measure a child’s ability to shift and divide attention, but they also cover problem-solving and comprehension skills. “They’re smarter,” Goldstein says.

Another germane fact: In the Kaiser study, computer use and TV didn’t seem to affect grades, but more time playing video games and less time reading were linked to poorer grades. About half of kids have a video game player in their rooms; more than two-thirds have TV sets.

Violent video games and TV have been shown to encourage aggressive behavior, says Michael Rich, a Harvard pediatrician and director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. Also, the more TV watched, the more overweight a kid is likely to be, he says.”

Although no long-term research has been performed to verify brain changes, it is widely accepted that the brain changes due to the external environment (neuroplasticity). Therefore, it makes perfect sense that all initial indications point to the fact that we are changing as a species due to our technology.

Is our change for the better or worse? If the answer is related to driving and speaking on a cell phone, the answer is obviously worse. If it’s related increased IQ scores it’s for the better.

Still, the fact that children want to be entertained more now than ever before, the fact that they have a more difficult time sitting still and listening, the fact that they cannot pay attention to something as simple and beautiful as a flower because “it’s boring” is most disturbing. Proponents of the technology evolution/revolution propose that children can now learn faster and must have more stimulating input. It’s difficult to argue against that. However, there exists a fine line between entertainment and education. Our finest discoveries have come from carefully examining the nuances of relationships, cells, atoms, and the cosmos. I would maintain that our survival as a species depends on our ability to fathom the great subtleties of life. This is not discovered through high stimulation, but by a careful, quiet examination of the world around us.

real life: Dana Knight
Attention, please. Distracted workers often fail to produce

April 8, 2005

I was just about to get down to the nitty-gritty of writing when an evil little temporary tattoo I received in the mail peeked from beneath my towering stack of files.

Wonder what that would look like on my ankle?

I rushed to the restroom. One damp cloth and 30-second rub later, the funky, mustard-colored sun tattoo looked pretty darned good.

The work I was trying to do at my desk? Not so good.

But I’m back. Settled down in my chair with the Diet Pepsi I picked up on the way back from the tattoo task and ready to admit: ADD is a problem for me.

ADD as in Always Doubly Distracted at work. With e-mails, phone calls, life. With the boss, the touch-ups to makeup, the alluring infohole called the Internet, sometimes I feel like staying focused on one task is impossible.

My American co-workers are with me on this one and more distracted than ever, according to a recent Harvard University study.

The average employee’s attention span is, at most, 12 minutes. The average worker switches to a different task every three minutes and gets interrupted every two minutes, says Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California-Irvine who studies the effects of multitasking on workers. She reported her findings to Ergonomics Today.

With technology overload (experts estimate workers respond to at least 200 e-mails daily) and the multitasking culture, employees’ brains are about to fizzle out.

“We’re inundated with information, and we don’t really know what to do with it all or how to process it,” says Peter Freer, founder and chief executive officer of Play Attention, a funky new piece of technology that can retrain a brain to focus (I’ll explain later). “It comes in cell phones, PDAs, faxes, e-mails, regular phones, radio and TV. Many of us have attention problems.”

I just noticed a book on my desk called “Speak Like a CEO: Secrets for Commanding Attention and Getting Results.” It says to always walk on stage as if you belong there and to be unpredictable. Interesting. Now what was I doing? Oh yeah.

Overworked employees are triply distracted and unproductive, says Paul Riley, a psychiatrist with St. Vincent Stress Center.

“You are not focused,” says Riley. “You make a lot of mistakes.”

It’s a problem, a big one for employers, who lose valuable hours in productivity and attention to detail, as well as other distraction downfalls.

Experts say distracted workers have more unscheduled absences and higher medical expenses.

Often, the mere mention of a sick co-worker can cause a distracted worker to . . .

OK, I’ll admit it. I need new return address labels, and I’m sick of the same old ones. So I just Googled it. There were 2.57 million hits.

And the bosses wonder why work isn’t getting done.

An estimated 8 million adult Americans struggle with the inattention disorders like attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to researchers from Harvard Medical School. But, they say, only 20 percent realize it.

It shouldn’t take your boss long to figure it out.

“It is very difficult for a person with an attention problem to survive in the workplace without being discovered,” says Freer. “They’ll start 20 or 30 projects and finish none of them.”

Freer’s technology, called Play Attention, has been a big hit among major corporations that realize the problems with unfocused workers.

The way it works is simple. The employee wears a helmet lined with sensors that monitor brain activity. The software is popped into the computer and the worker is instructed to focus on the computer screen and the tasks at hand.

For example, if a fax shows up on the computer screen, the user is to move it using only brainpower to the in box. Same for a piece of junk mail that shows up; the user should concentrate until the mail lands in the trash can.

The more the user practices, the more the brain improves and gets used to being focused.

Nikko Smith just got booted off “American Idol.” Bummer.

I haven’t used the Play Attention yet. Can you tell?

Arif Najib, MD, with the University of Tübingen Medical Center in Tübingen, Germany used MRI scans to view brain changes of women after ending a romantic relationship. Najib’s findings indicate that grief produces considerable changes in the MRIs. His study appears in the December 2004 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Najib thinks that depression may cause the brain to malfunction – especially the areas of normal circuitry for handling sadness, separation, and grief.

“In this current study, Najib and colleagues chose 11 female volunteers who were in the throes of grief over a recent breakup of a romantic relationship. Many were having trouble getting it out of their minds – a risk factor for major depression.

Najib’s researchers looked at brain scans while grieving women focused on sad thoughts about their romantic relationship. Then they performed brain imaging scans while women had neutral thoughts of a different person they had known for an equally long time.

During the study, the women were still having difficulty getting the loss out of their minds, but most had resolved their depressive symptoms.

Women still grieving over the romantic relationship had the greatest brain changes, he reports. Although there was increased brain activity in many regions associated with sadness, they also had much less activity in the brain region associated with emotion, motivation, and attention – the amygdala.”

This process has been viewed before in persons subjected to severe trauma. Researchers noted that the hippocampus, the center of memory, emotion, and learning, seemed to substantially decrease in these persons perhaps to avoid remembering the trauma. While we know that positive challenges shape the brain by increasing neural connections, we also know now that negative influences shape the brain negatively.

The Impact of 3-Tier Formularies on Drug Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children, a study published in the April 2005 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, concludes that number of health plans that limit the cost of ADHD drugs has been increasing in recent years.

Lead researcher, Haiden A. Huskamp, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of
Health Economics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical
School.

The study concludes that in an effort to save money, many health plans encourage physicians and parents to select drugs that are ‘preferred’ by the health plan. Drugs selected that are not on the preferred list mean higher out of pocket expenses or co-payments. This reduces the likelihood parents will buy ADHD medication for a child.
 
The study found for one health plan, three-tier formularies resulted in a 17 percent decrease in the probability that parents would purchase an ADHD medication for their child. In addition, with the three-tier adoption, the plan’s spending decreased 43 percent and enrollee spending increased 46 percent.”

It seems that the health of the individual should take precedence over money saving strategies. Health plans should encourage, not discourage appropriate drug use.