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NEW YORK, Mar 02 (Reuters Health) - The meditation masters are right. Overload your mind with too many stray thoughts and you won't be able to focus on the task at hand.
The ability to ignore irrelevant distractions is critical to concentration, but this ability requires a certain amount of free "working memory," according to Dr. Jan de Fockert from University College London, UK, and associates.
Working memory is the contemporary term for short-term memory, or that process in the brain in which people temporarily store information. Visual memory is the ability to create an image in the mind's eye from visual experiences.
To understand the relationship between visual and working memory, the investigators tested the ability of 10 volunteers to ignore visual distractions, such as pictures of famous people, while being asked to remember a series of numbers.
When asked to remember more information--a strain on working memory--the participants experienced more difficulty ignoring distractions, the report indicates.
Activity in brain areas required for focused attention increased when participants were asked to remember more complicated strings of numbers, the researchers report in the March 2nd issue of Science. This suggests that increased memory requirements "use up" the brain areas needed to concentrate.
"Our findings suggest that, especially in an environment in which visual distraction is likely, it is crucial that mental processing resources are available for excluding potentially interfering information," de Fockert told Reuters Health.
"When working memory is occupied, our brains cannot filter out distracting visual information," the researcher explained.
"For example," de Fockert said, "when driving a car in busy traffic, a demanding conversation on a mobile phone will reduce the availability of working memory for excluding visually distracting information, such as billboards along the road. These distractors will compete for attention more strongly now, and reduce task performance."
The doctor advised, "Try to avoid taxing mental tasks when dealing with visual environments that include distracting objects."
"Do not engage in deep thought or a demanding conversation while driving," de Fockert added.
SOURCE: Science 2001;291:1803-1806.
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