Why you can't focus and what science says can help
When people can't focus, it's not because the brain lacks the power to do so, it's because focus requires different parts of the brain to work together, a study has shown.
The finding could help us to understand attention-related disorders such as ADHD, researchers say, as the way the brain focuses attention is similar to how the body performs physical tasks.
Lead author Harrison Ritz said: "In the same way that we bring together more than 50 muscles to perform a physical task like using chopsticks, our study found that we can coordinate multiple different forms of attention in order to perform acts of mental dexterity."
Co-author Amitai Shenhav added: "These findings can help us to understand how we as humans are able to exhibit such tremendous cognitive flexibility – to pay attention to what we want when we want to. They can also help us better understand limitations on that flexibility, and how limitations might manifest in certain attention-related disorders such as ADHD."
How did the study work?
Volunteers completed a task that measured their focus while sitting in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine to see which parts of their brains were active.
Participants saw a swirling mass of green and purple dots moving left and right, like a swarm of fireflies. The tasks, which varied in difficulty, involved distinguishing between the movement and colours of the dots.
For example, participants in one exercise were instructed to select which colour was in the majority for the rapidly moving dots when the ratio of purple to green was almost 50/50.
What did the study find?
The researchers found that two parts of the brain worked together to enable volunteers to focus.
Ritz said: "You can think about the intraparietal sulcus as having two knobs on a radio dial: one that adjusts focusing and one that adjusts filtering. In our study, the anterior cingulate cortex tracks what's going on with the dots. When the anterior cingulate cortex recognises that, for instance, motion is making the task more difficult, it directs the intraparietal sulcus to adjust the filtering knob in order to reduce the sensitivity to motion.
"In the scenario where the purple and green dots are almost at 50/50, it might also direct the intraparietal sulcus to adjust the focusing knob in order to increase the sensitivity to colour. Now the relevant brain regions are less sensitive to motion and more sensitive to the appropriate colour, so the participant is better able to make the correct selection."
What does this mean?
The finding shows that human brains are exceptionally complex and that different parts can work together to unlock people's power to focus.
Ritz said: "When people talk about the limitations of the mind, they often put it in terms of, 'humans just don't have the mental capacity' or 'humans lack computing power'.
"These findings support a different perspective on why we're not focused all the time. It's not that our brains are too simple, but instead that our brains are really complicated, and it's the coordination that's hard.”
What are science-backed ways to improve your focus?
Multiple studies have shown that writing a to-do list with detailed entries (not just one word) and ticking them off as you go helps to improve focus.
David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, suggests writing down not only who you are doing a task for, but also what it is can help to get things done.
Neuroscientist Nilli Lavie says that eliminating distractions – including being able to see colleagues, plus notifications on your phone – can help focus.
A Dutch study found that aerobic activity can help to improve attention span – so it might be worth having a jog if you are struggling to focus.
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