In socially awkward situations when a person is caught staring and averts their eyes, a third-party observer does not reflexively follow their gaze. The brain tells the observer there is no significance to the location where the embarrassed person has turned their attention.
Children who experience early life adversity experience faster biological aging than children with no history of exposure to abuse. Trauma was associated with biological aging in early puberty, cellular aging, and alterations in brain structure. The findings may explain why children who experienced adversity early in life often suffer poor health as they age.
Paying attention alters how the brain allocates its limited energy. As the brain uses more energy to process information we attend to, the less energy is supplied to processing outside our field of attention.
Mouse study pinpoints the precise location in the brain where distracting stimuli are blocked, allowing for concentration on specific tasks. The findings could have implications for the treatment of ADHD and schizophrenia.
It is well documented that animals perk up their ears when they hear a noise that captures their attention. A new study reveals humans also do the same. Researchers demonstrated humans make small, unconscious movements of their ears directed toward a sound that sparks attention.
Researchers scrutinize the long-held perception that new mothers are more forgetful and less attentive. Mothers, they found, have similar alerting and orienting attention, and better executive control attention compared to women without children.
A new study reveals the relationship between attentional state and emotions from pupillary reactions. Visual perception elicits emotions in all attentional state, while auditory perception elicits emotions only when attention is paid to sounds.
To spot a missing item, people are 20% faster at locating what they are looking for if they factor in latent physical traits, like hardness or softness.
Women who ate a meal high in saturated fats performed worse on attention-based tests than women eating healthier meals. The findings reveal a potential link between high-fat diets and poor attention skills. Additionally, those with a condition called leaky gut, which allows bacteria from the intestines to enter the bloodstream, performed worse on attention tasks regardless of whether they ate a high-fat meal or chose a healthier option.
Those on the autism spectrum had atypically smaller pupil dilation compared to the control group during distracting conditions while taking a push-button test. The findings suggest those with ASD may have dysregulation in locus coeruleus activity. The dysregulation of the LC may explain the exaggerated responses to environmental stimuli and fixated behaviors many with ASD experience.
Patterns of functional connectivity reliably predict when people were more or less focused on a task.
Brain training exercises do not help boost early math learning. However, core thinking skills, including memory and attention, are key skills that support early math learning.