A treatment for daydreams? Scientists are developing an electronic ALARM that sounds when it detects your mind has wandered
- Scientists can tell when you’re losing focus based on your brain activity
- They developed an electronic alarm that sounds every time this happens
- People given this treatment are significantly less likely to daydream, a study suggests
Daydreamers who are easily distracted may soon have a solution to keep their minds from wandering.
Scientists can use their brain activity to detect when someone is beginning to lose concentration and set off an electronic alarm whenever this happens.
A small study suggests that people given this treatment are significantly less likely to dream.
The study involved 36 people under the age of 60 who were given a concentrated task in which they had to press a button each time a number flashed on a screen, unless it was the number three.
Daydreamers who are easily distracted may soon have a solution to stop their thoughts (stock image)
School children spend about a quarter of the time daydreaming
If your children are easily distracted, they are not alone.
Researchers have found that schoolchildren spend about a quarter of the time daydreaming when they should be listening.
A study of nearly 100 children ages 6 to 11 tested how much their minds wander while being told a story.
Asked every two minutes if they were thinking about something else, the children admitted to daydreaming 25 percent of the time.
For a boy it was 83 percent.
About every 18 seconds, they were asked how intensely they were concentrating on the task to determine when their mind wandered.
After identifying people’s brain activity as their minds wandered by using electrodes on their scalps, the researchers again gave them the 20-minute number task.
This time, more than half of the people in the group heard an electronic alarm when their brain patterns showed their minds had drifted.
Their minds wandered less often after hearing the sounds compared to people who were not warned when daydreaming.
It suggests that a set of electrodes on the head and a warning sound could help daydreamers focus better on what they’re supposed to be doing.
Typically, people spend a quarter to a half of their time thinking random thoughts when they should be concentrating.
dr Issaku Kawashima, who led the study from the ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratory Group in Japan, said: “Our ultimate goal is to develop neurofeedback training that enables people to manage their mind wandering in a beneficial way.”
Mind wandering can make people less productive and is linked to depression.
Scientists can use their brain activity to detect when someone is beginning to lose concentration and sound an electronic alarm whenever this happens (stock image)
The study, published in the journal Neural Networks, gave 20 of the volunteers electronic sounds to indicate when their minds were wandering, while 16 randomly heard sounds.
Both groups were told that the electronic noises, which occurred an average of 35 times, were random and that they should ignore them.
The researchers wanted to understand if using sounds when people’s minds wandered helped them recognize it was happening and stop it.
So they asked the study group to focus on their breathing for 15 minutes before and after listening to the sounds and to press a button each time their mind wandered, being asked every 60 seconds if their mind wandered.
It’s normal for people to daydream more in the second breathing task session as it becomes more repetitive and boring.
But those who played sounds to alert them to their wandering minds appeared to be better able to control their daydreams, reporting they did so only 44 percent of the time in the second session.
In contrast, people who didn’t play sounds to alert them when they were daydreaming did so 55 percent of the time in the second session.
HOW TO INDUCE DÉJÀ VU?
Scientists claim to have cracked the mystery of deja vu — and say that if you don’t experience it, it could be a sign of health problems.
Scientists claim to have cracked the mystery of deja vu. Image from a photo agency
Akira O’Connor of the University of St Andrews used fMRI to scan the brains of 21 volunteers after they were given triggers.
O’Connor and his team used a method to induce déjà vu in the lab using a method developed by Josie Urquhart.
It uses a standard method to trigger false memories.
The subjects are read a list of related words – like bed, pillow, night, dream – but not the keyword that ties them together, in this case sleep.
When later questioned about the words heard, the person tends to think they also heard “sleep” – a false memory.
To create a feeling of déjà vu,
The team asked people if they had heard words beginning with the letter “s”.
The volunteers replied that they had not.
When asked later if they had heard the word sleep, they could recall that they hadn’t, but at the same time the word sounded familiar.