"The Science of Concentration" - Rapt a Guide to Paying attention

“Multitasking is a myth You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.You can drive yourself crazy trying to multitask, Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, achieve the satisfactions of what focused life.”

Imagine that you have ditched your laptop and turned off your smartphone. You are beyond the reach of YouTube, Facebook, e-mail, text messages. You are in a Twitter-free zone, sitting in a taxicab with a copy of ‘Rapt,’ a guide by Winifred Gallagher to the science of paying attention.

The taxi’s television, which can’t be turned off, is showing a commercial of a guy in a taxi working on a laptop — and as long as he’s jabbering about how his new wireless card has made him so productive during his cab ride, you can’t do anything productive during yours.

When something bright or novel flashes, it tends to automatically win the competition for the brain’s attention, but that involuntary bottom-up impulse can be voluntarily overridden through a top-down process that Dr. Desimone calls “biased competition.” He and colleagues have found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex — the brain’s planning center — start oscillating in unison and send signals directing the visual cortex to heed something else.

These oscillations, called gamma waves, are created by neurons’ firing on and off at the same time — a feat of neural coordination a bit like getting strangers in one section of a stadium to start clapping in unison, thereby sending a signal that induces people on the other side of the stadium to clap along. But these signals can have trouble getting through in a noisy environment.

Now that neuroscientists have identified the brain’s synchronizing mechanism, they’ve started work on therapies to strengthen attention. In the current issue of Nature, researchers from M.I.T., Penn and Stanford report that they directly induced gamma waves in mice by shining pulses of laser light through tiny optical fibers onto genetically engineered neurons. In the current issue of Neuron, Dr. Desimone and colleagues report progress in using this “optogenetic” technique in monkeys.

Ultimately, Desimone said, it may be possible to improve your attention by using pulses of light to directly synchronize your neurons, a form of direct therapy that could help people with schizophrenia and attention-deficit problems

In the nearer future, neuroscientists might also help you focus by observing your brain activity and providing biofeedback as you practice strengthening your concentration. Ms. Gallagher advocates meditation to increase your focus and Concentration
Robert Desimone : (Neuroscientist at MIT, Working on the Therapies of Attention)
“It takes a lot of your prefrontal brain power to force yourself not to process a strong input like a television commercial," . “If you’re trying to read a book at the same time, you may not have the resources left to focus on the words.”

Ms. Gallagher:( Author of Rapt, A guide to paying attention)
“People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money” , “Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience
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