attention

Want to improve your attention? Arts & Sciences brain sciences researcher Richard Abrams at Washington University in St. Louis finds that our attention may be guided by the most recent interactions with our environment.

Patients with tinnitus hear phantom noise and are sometimes so bothered by the perceived ringing in their ears they have difficulty concentrating. A new therapy does not lessen perception of the noise but appears to help patients cope better with it in their daily lives, according to new research led by Jay Piccirillo, MD.

The brain appears to synchronize the activity of different brain regions to make it possible for a person to pay attention or concentrate on a task, scientists at the School of Medicine have learned. Pictured is the study’s first author, graduate student researcher Amy Daitch.

Tasks requiring shifting of attention, like driving a car while conversing with a passenger, may be challenging for people in very early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.People in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease have greater difficulty shifting attention back and forth between competing sources of information, a finding that offers new support for theories that contend breakdowns in attention play an important role in onset of the disease. Published in a recent issue of the journal Neuropsychology, the study suggests that subtle breakdowns in attention may offer one of the earliest reliable clues that a patient is grappling with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s-related dementia.