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new research by EyalOphir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony D. Wagner at Stanford University suggests that people who multitask suffer from a problem: weaker self-control ability.

then recruited people who had scores that were extremely high or low and asked them perform a series of tests designed to measure the ability to control one's attention, one's responses, and the contents of one's memory. They found that the high- and low- media-multitasking groups were equally able to control their responses, but that the heavy media-multitasking group had difficulties, compared to the low media-multitasking group, when asked to ignore information that was in the environment or in their recent memory. They also had greater trouble relative to their counterparts when asked to switch rapidly between two different tasks. This last finding was surprising, because psychologists know that multitasking involves switching rapidly between tasks rather than actually performing multiple tasks simultaneously.

It seems that chronic media-multitaskers are more susceptible to distractions. In contrast, people who do not usually engage in media-multitasking showed a greater ability to focus on important information. According to the researchers, this reflects two fundamentally different strategies of information processing. Those who engage in media-multitasking more frequently are "breadth-biased," preferring to explore any available information rather than restrict themselves. AsLin Lin at the University of North Texas puts it in a review of the article, they develop a habit of treating all information equally. On the other extreme are those who avoid breadth in favor of information that is relevant to an immediate goal.

It turns out that just under half the time, 46.9% to be exact, people are doing what's called 'mind wandering'. They are not focused on the outside world or the task at hand, they are looking into their own thoughts. Unfortunately, the study of 2,250 people proposes, most of this activity doesn't make us feel happy.

people report being unhappy during mind wandering.Something that we do nearly half the time makes us unhappy! No wonder there are so many spiritual and religious traditions trying to implore people to 'live in the present'.

A 2007 study called "Mindfulness meditation reveals distinct neural modes of self-reference" by Norman Farb at the University of Toronto, along with six other scientists, broke new ground in our understanding of mindfulness from a neuroscience perspective.

New research conducted at The Scripps Research Institute shows that this road atlas undergoes constant revisions as the brain of a young animal develops, with new routes forming and others dropping away in a matter of hours. "We have shown that the connectome is dynamic during development, but we expect it will also change according to an individual's experience and in response to disease,"

Cline's group has been studying how experience—the different sights and sounds and other environmental cues picked up by neurons—change connections and activities in the brain through a process known as plasticity. "Based on our prior research we expected that the connectome would be dynamic," says Cline. To start to document how the connectome changes and test current models of how the map is laid out, Cline and colleagues turned to the frog Xenopus laevis. They combined two new techniques to map in great detail all the connections that form during tadpole development in an area of the brain that receives and interprets signals from the eyes. In the nervous system, information is handed from one nerve cell to another through two arms, called dendrites and axons, stretching out from opposite sides of each cell. The axon carries information away from a nerve cell, or neuron, and passes it to the dendrite of another; dendrites receive the information, which travels through the cell to the axon. The region where information is transferred from one neuron to another (and where axons and dendrites connect) is called the synapse.

Cline's study shows instead the process is not as selective. Each growing dendrite samples not one but many possible partners before selecting one with which to maintain contact. As new branches grow from dendrites, they form many immature synapses on axons. Then, as each new dendrite branch matures, most immature synapses are eliminated; the ones not eliminated mature into stable synapses. "We did not know that dendrites make so many connections that are then removed," says Cline. "It is always fun in science when you see that what was expected is not what actually happens."

It will perceive its surroundings, decide which information is useful, integrate that information into the emerging structure of its reality, and in some applications, formulate plans that will ensure its survival. In other words, MoNETA will be motivated by the same drives that motivate cockroaches, cats, and humans.

“The brain is a creativity machine,” Columbia University neuroscientist Eric Kandel told his Harvard audience on Feb. 8. “We get incomplete information from the outside world, and we make a whole lot of things up. This is why the brain can be deceived so easily — because it’s guessing all the time.”

“If you remember anything about this lecture, it’s because genes in your brain will be altered,” said the Columbia University professor, who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his studies on memory. “If you remember this tomorrow, or the next day, a week later, you will have a different brain than when you walked into this lecture.”

“Memory, as you know, makes us who we are,” Kandel said. “It’s the glue that binds our mental life together. Without the unifying force of memory, we would be broken into as many fragments as there are moments in the day.”

The human brain works incredibly fast but visual impressions are so complex that their processing takes up to several hundred milliseconds before they enter our consciousness.  Researchers say they know why this delay may vary in length; if you already know what you are about to see, you recognize it faster.

In an experiment, participants perceived stimuli more efficiently and faster if they knew what to expect. To investigate this, the scientists showed the participants images with a background of randomly distributed dots on a monitor. During an image sequence, the distribution of the dots systematically changed such that a symbol gradually appeared. Following each image, the participants indicated if they could see the symbol by pressing a button. As soon as the symbol had appeared fully and was clearly recognizable, the scientists presented the same image sequence in reverse order, such that the symbol gradually faded again.

“Expectations based on previously acquired information apparently help to perceive the object consciously”

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards..." - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Episodic memory is an autobiographical that encodes specific times, places, sensory details and context, in contrast to semantic or non-personal memory that encodes facts (like 3 + 2 = 5 or the definition of a shoe) that can deal with more abstract or representational information that now may only be distantly linked to prior experiences.

When researchers looked at the brain regions involved in looking at the past, they found many of the same regions activated in response to prompts to imagine events in the future.