Resiliency, Inc. News

March 2014 www.resiliencyinc.comolume 1, Number 1

Issue Focus: The Loss of Focus The New Breed of High Sensation Seekers Horacio Sanchez

The new breed of high sensation seekers are not chasing storms or jumping off cliffs. They are chasing high amounts of mental stimulation: surfing the web, watching videos, texting, emailing, working on their laptops or tablets, taking photos or filming, listening to music on their devices. Often times they engage in many of these activities simultaneously. The ramifications of this behavior are an increasing desire for stimulation that can result in an inability to focus and a loss of emotional stability. In This Issue Gary Small, MD, Professor of Psychiatry  The New Breed of High at the David Geffen School of Medicine Sensation Seekers at UCLA and colleagues conducted a  Finding Focus neuroimaging study evaluating the brain’s activity when individuals are engaged in surfing the web compared to reading a book. All the brain regions engaged when reading a book double in activation when surfing the web. The

natural assumption is that activities that cause this level of initial stimulation often experience a reduction in brain activity once the practice becomes more familiar. However, just the opposite occurred with individuals surfing the web. The activity of conducting online searches not only maintained high levels of stimulation but stimulation levels heightened with increased exposure. The dilemma is that when the adapting brain quickly becomes conditioned to that level of stimulation it seeks more and more. Brains conditioned to this high level of stimulation will struggle to maintain focus when engaged in low stimulation tasks such as reading a book, listening to a lecture, or writing a paper. Small’s conclusion is that constant interaction with technology runs the risk of reducing the brain’s ability to focus on one task and even creates a form of behavioral addiction.1

Contact Us Some clever teachers reading this article might think, why not put text 919-544-0616 books on tablets and merely conform to the changing brain. Such conformity will fail because the brain’s desire for constant stimulation www.resiliencyinc.com requires exposure to novel stimuli every few minutes. As a result, a book even if placed on a tablet will encounter a drop in focus in a

matter of minutes. This explains why individuals who constantly surf the web average less than sixty seconds per site.

In 2009, Nass and two colleagues published findings concluding that people who engage in multitasking through the use of technological

devices are unable to pay attention as well as individuals who limit their interaction with multiple forms of technology.2 The study determined that the more an individual engages in multitasking using technology the lower their ability to maintain focus. Individuals will mask this type of brain adaptation by merely engaging in multiple

things at one time so that their brains can continuously skip from task to task. This deludes them into thinking they are getting more done at one time. The reality is that the brain is actually incapable of multitasking. The brain cannot engage in several tasks simultaneously; it actually skips from one task to another at rapid rates of speed. However, during the switching between tasks the performance of all tasks suffers. Nass’ conclusion was that “multitaskers are lousy at multitasking.”

Let’s put these findings in practical terms. The brain is placid and changes in a unique way from persistent experiences in both structure and function.3 4 The student who is unable to do homework without listening to music finds him or herself constantly checking their cell phone, while having the laptop open to multiple sites. The student tells him or herself that the music and other devices help maintain focus because when not multitasking he or she quickly tires Brain Nugget of the task. The truth is that the student can no longer focus on low A recent study examining sensory homework assignments and has surrounded the activity with multitasking ability found that high sensation components in order to get the sensory fix he or she individuals who report so desperately needs. The result is homework performed at a multitasking more frequently, standard below the student’s abilities. This drop in performance is multitask less well than those not noted by teacher, student or parent because the high standard who are less frequent requiring focus was never established. multitaskers. Indicating that the ability to multitask does A year after his initial study on not improve with practice. multimedia multitaskers, Nass and - Ophir et al., 2009 colleagues began studying the effects of chronic technology multitasking—texting, searching the web, watching YouTube videos, etc.—on the developing brain. In 2012 he published findings that preteen girls who spend large amounts of time multitasking with digital devices tend to be less successful with social and emotional development. The girls who spent a

high amount of hours watching videos and using online communication stated feeling less social success, not feeling normal, not sleeping well and having more friends whom parents perceived as bad influences.5

Recent studies have shown that the ability to focus is not only crucial in carrying out cognitive tasks but also insulates the brain from

developing emotional problems. The reduction in the ability to focus

has now been associated with an increased risk of depression, anxiety, panic disorders, and phobias.

All is not lost. Resiliency Inc. has began to train schools to conduct simple focus exercises with students that can help restore the brain’s ability to maintain concentration on one task at a time. In schools that consistently perform focus drills with students, teachers report increased on task behavior and improved academic performance. Similar focus exercises have been successfully utilized in studies that demonstrate both cognitive and emotional improvement through this type of brain training. For example, Amishi Jha, Associate Professor of Psychology at University of Miami, in 2010 had marines performing in high risk jobs participate in focus exercises for 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. The marines that engaged in the focus exercises were found to not only have improved memory capacity, but also have better mood stability and performance under pressure as compared to the control group.

A longitudinal study conducted over twenty years indicated that there are long-term lasting benefits to the brain’s structure and functioning Brain Nugget for individuals who consistently engage in focus exercises. The A very small percentage of connections associated with improved cognitive performance and the world’s population are insulation from emotional disorders becomes more intricately linked. supertaskers. Able to The stronger the connections between prefrontal and parietal cortex, successfully perform two and insula the better an individual’s ability to maintain emotional attention-demanding tasks stability, improve decision making, and maintain focus.6 without incurring substantial cost in performance. The Many teachers are attempting to educate the new high sensation occurrence of supertaskers is seekers through lecturing, reading and writing assignments. Many of so low that the odds of the students who desire to attend to these tasks find themselves anyone reading this article unable to because they are in need of greater levels of sensory being one is nil. The ability to supertask most likely comes stimulation. What can be done to address the loss of focus? with deficiencies to other . Teachers must begin to educate students on how their brains mental processes. are impacted by constant interaction with technology. - Watson and Strayer . Train students to improve their brain’s ability to focus by Psychomomic Bulletin & dedicating 60 seconds at the beginning of class to conducting Review 2012. 17(4). 497-485. a simple focus exercise that will help their brains regain the

ability to maintain concentration. . Inform students of the need to spend an hour a day unplugged. . Educate students that the ability to focus is essential in maximizing one’s potential and maintaining good mental health.

It is a brave new world and teachers need to be better equipped to deal with the new challenges we face in the era of technology.

1 Gary Small MD, Teena Moody PhD, et al. Your Brain on Google: Patterns of Cerebral Activation during Internet Searching. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 17:2:116-126. February 2009

2 Ophir, E., Nass, C. I., & Wagner, A. D. (in press). Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

3 Neville, H.J. (Executive Producer), Marquez, A. (Producer/Director), Taylor, P. (Producer), and

Pakulak, E. (Producer). (2009). Changing brains: Effects of experience on human brain development [Motionpicture].United States:CPR.

4 Hensch, T.K. (2004). Critical period regulation. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 27, 549–579.

5 Roy Pea, Clifford Nass, Lyn Meheula, Marcus Rance, Aman Kumar, Holden Bamford, Matthew Nass, Aneesh Simha, Benjamin Stillerman, Steven Yang, Michael Zhou Journal: Developmental Psychology - DEVELOP PSYCHOL , vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 327-336, 2012

6 Luders E, Kurth F, Mayer EA, Toga AW, Narr KL, and Gaser C. (2012, Feb 29). The unique brain anatomy of meditation practitioners: alterations in cortical gyrification. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6:34. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00034

Further Reading . Mindfulness Training Modifies Subsystems of Attention. A. P. Jha, J. Krompinger and M. J. Baime in Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 7, No. 2, pages 109–119; 2007. . Attention Regulation and Monitoring in Meditation. A. Lutz, H. A. Slagter, J. D. Dunne and R. J. Davidson in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 4, pages 163–169; April 1, 2008. . Examining the Protective Effects of Mindfulness Training on Working Memory and Affective Experience. A. P. Jha et al. in Emotion, Vol. 10, No. 1, pages 54–64; February 2010. The brain’s of young children are especially plastic and malleable (Huttenlocker, 2002). This Finding Focus explains why the American Amish P. Jha Academy of Pediatrics recommend that parents As mindfulness training was gaining traction as a wellness-promotion limit the amount of screen and stress-reduction tool in the early 2000s, I began to consider, from time for children younger a cognitive perspective, how it might work. As late as 2007 my field— than two years of age cognitive neuroscience —had yet to weigh in on what is happening in because the consequence the brain when people practice mindfulness. I wondered if my own of high sensory exposure expertise on the brain bases of attention might be able to fill the gaps at such a young age might in our understanding. There were striking parallels between current have devastating theories of distinct brain systems supporting attention and accounts outcomes. from ancient texts describing practices to cultivate calm focus and - American Academy of open. Pediatrics 2001 Physician Michael Baime of the University of Pennsylvania, psychologist Jason Krompinger, now at Harvard Medical School, and I set out to investigate this link by asking 34 medical and nursing students to perform a test of visual attention. They had to detect a target appearing at one of two locations on a computer screen. Sometimes

they were told where and when the target would appear; other times they were either alerted only to when it would appear or given no warning at all. Then for eight weeks, half the subjects engaged in mindfulness exercises that required concentrated focus for 30 minutes a day. When they took the test again, these volunteers were 5 percent faster at responding during the trials in which they were told

both where and when the target would appear, indicating that they

were better at directing their attention to the cued location than the untrained participants, who showed no improvement. The results were the first hint that we were on the right track in linking mindfulness training with a person’s ability to willfully orient his or her attention in space.

We then separately tested the effects of the open-monitoring approach, visual attention text conducted on a computer screen, on attention by recruiting another 17 individuals with previous experience in mindfulness training to participate in a one month

intensive mindfulness retreat. The retreat included receptive, open- monitoring practices in addition to focusing exercises. At the end of the month, the participants had improved their ability to detect the target when there was no warning. Their responses were 7 percent faster than other groups receiving only concentrated exercises or no training, suggesting that open-monitoring practices tune bottom-up attention, making people more aware of what is going on around them. Since this study, experiments from various research teams have found similar benefits on attention from these two types of mindfulness exercises.

Mindfulness training can tune our ability to attend to tactile as well as visual stimulation. In 2011 psychologist Catherine Kerr and her colleagues at Harvard enrolled eight people in an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, requiring 45 Research shows the ability to minutes of daily practice. The researchers then flashed a word on a willfully focus your attention computer screen denoting a body part—say, “hand” or “foot”—that is physically separate in the might soon be getting a light, barely detectable tap. While the brain from distracting things participants watched the words and felt the taps, Kerr and her grabbing your attention. The ability to maintain focus is a colleagues measured ongoing seven- to 10-hertz magnetic signals at higher ordered skill. the scalp from neurons representing the hand in the somatosensory Distractibility is a lower cortex, a region of the brain that registers sensations from various ordered function that is body parts. Among the participants who took the course, but not in designed to only take priority eight untrained individuals, the researchers saw greater signal power when the competing in the hand area of the brain after seeing “hand” compared with stimulation is dramatic or life “foot,” reflecting an increased readiness of neurons to fire, a brain threatening. Therefore, the signature of attention. This anticipatory activity, before the hand was loss of the ability to maintain tapped, suggests that MBSR tunes people’s ability to generate high- focus on one task can be resolution representations of their hand or other body parts at will, considered a regression sharpening body awareness. rather than an evolution. - Earl Miller, a These results may help explain how MBSR may alleviate the neuroscientist at the psychological impact of chronic pain. If a person can willfully direct Massachusetts Institute of attention to specific body parts that are experiencing pain, he or she Technology - 2007 may notice subtle fluctuations in sensations at those locations, to the point where the idea of pain as a monolithic “thing” may fall apart into ever changing sensations. As a result, the pain may become less distressing. Similar mechanisms tied to attention may be at play for psychological and social stressors. In these cases, present-moment focus and monitoring of sadness or loneliness may help minimize the perceived significance of these forms of suffering.

Recently my colleagues and I have connected mindfulness training to both a sharpening of focus and improved mood. In a study published

in 2010 we tested 51 U.S. marines, 34 of whom engaged in

mindfulness exercises involving focused attention developed by Elizabeth A. Stanley, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University. We asked marines to remember letters that appeared on a computer screen before and after simple math problems, which they were supposed to solve. This task assessed their working memory, the ability to hold and manipulate selected information over a few to several seconds. Working memory, akin to a mental white board, works hand in hand with attention, which puts the information onto the board and keeps distractions off of it.

People with higher working memory capacity—think of a bigger whiteboard—are better able to regulate mood and prevent their minds from getting off-track. Unfortunately, working memory capacity shrinks under stress, which marines experience as they prepare for military deployment. Indeed, we found that marines who did not receive mindfulness training had lower working memory capacity, more itinerant minds and worse mood at the end of the eight weeks than they did when the study began. Marines who engaged in mindfulness exercises for 12 minutes or more every day, however, kept their working memory capacity, focus and mood stable over the eight weeks. The more an individual practiced, the better he or she fared, with those who practiced the most showing improvements in memory and mood by the end of the study. These results are in line with other findings that suggest that better control of attention is the most effective way to regulate mood.

“Marines who engaged in Several groups of researchers have found that these improvements mindfulness exercises for 12 in performance correspond to tractable changes in brain structure minutes or more every day … and function. In the brain, a network of regions, including certain kept their working memory sections of the prefrontal and parietal cortex (at the front and top capacity, focus and mood surface of the brain), support voluntary or top-down selective stable over the eight weeks.” attention. Meanwhile other parts of the prefrontal and parietal cortex, together with the insula, form a network that monitors what is happening in a bottom-up fashion. In 2012 neuroscientist Eileen Luders and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported that certain parts of this bottom-up network, prominently the insula, are more intricately and tightly folded in

people who have engaged in mindfulness training for an average of 20 years compared with otherwise similar untrained individuals. The additional folds are very likely to indicate more efficient communication among neurons in these regions, which may underpin better bottom-up attention. The above article is an excerpt from a chapter entitled, Being in the Now

FEATURED AUTHOR Amishi Jha, Ph.D. Principal Investigator Associate

Professor of Psychology and Director of Contemplative Neuroscience, Mindfulness Research & Practice Initiative, University of Miami. She has a

Ph.D. from the University of California- Davis, post-doctoral training in brain imaging at Duke University, and was a

faculty member at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania prior to her current post. Her research focuses on the brain bases of attention, working memory, and mindfulness-based training. follow: @amishijha ______Focus Since high levels of interaction with technology have been found to hinder focus, the widespread illegal use of the drugs Adderall and Ritalin by high school and college students to help with focus is becoming a norm. - Denise Pope

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Resiliency Inc. Has Helped Schools Establish Focus Training Programs for Students

Schools are learning that they are often fighting an uphill battle for student attention. The problem might be more than child and adolescent attention span. An increasing number of neuroscientists are claiming that the brains’ of

many of the “iGeneration” have a greater inability to maintain focus on a single task. School administrators and teachers are noticing this change. No longer is it only the students who suffer from Attention Deficient

Disorder that seem distracted. Schools today must:

. Teach students about the potential impact constant interaction with technology can have on focus, cognitive performance, and even emotional wellbeing. . Seek to provide concrete focus exercises that retrain the brain to improve focus. . Embrace educational approaches that stimulate more of the senses.

“Providing unique solutions to age old problems” is more

than a slogan, it is a mandate.

7 www.resiliencyinc.com