There are people who struggle to focus and pay attention. We consider this a physical condition, and we have names for it like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), I Really Don't Care What's Going On Disorder (IDRCWGOD) and others. In an effort to resolve these conditions researchers at Johns Hopkins University have spent time studying brown bats. I am not making this up. Maybe this makes sense to them because they don't want to spend money studying people who won't pay attention to them and can't focus on what they're saying It's probably easier to simply study captive brown bats.
Below are excerpts of the story in bold. My valuable insights are in italics.
Our ability to focus solely on relevant sensory information is a skill that we all take for granted. Research into where in the brain this talent resides is scant. New research using bats, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, digs a little deeper.
Who determines what is relevant sensory information? If representatives from the National Academy of Sciences want to see people focus on relevant sensory information, they should watch some of the intense bingo games I've seen. Those bingo players can smoke, drink, eat, chat and as they fill up the numbers on fifteen bingo cards. Everyone is very focused on trying to muffle the expletives coming from their mouth when a person yells “Bingo.”
Lead author Melville J. Wohlgemuth, a postdoctoral fellow in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, says:
"The bat brain has developed special sensitivities that allow it to pick out sounds from the environment that are pertinent to the animal. We were able to uncover these sensitivities because we used the perfect stimulus - the bat's own vocalizations."
Let's see if I have this straight. Researchers trying to discover how people can better pay attention spent time and money to observe brown bats talking to themselves? I wonder if individuals talking to themselves is considered perfect stimuli? There are many people who don't consider it perfect stimuli, but perfectly crazy. Can you imagine the thoughts going on inside the brown bat's mind?
“Wooo Hooo”
That's sounds very familiar.
“Wooo Hooo.”
“Why it sounds like me. Those silly researchers at the National Academy of Sciences sure are a tricky bunch.”
The researchers used five big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus), playing them a selection of different sounds while monitoring the activity in a specific section of their midbrain known as the superior colliculus. The superior colliculus (SC) is known to play a role in collating sensory information and issuing the correct motor response, for instance, moving away from a threatening sound or toward one that sounds like food.
I wonder if the brown bat's superior colliculus enables them to play a good game of bingo? If they heard someone yell “Bingo” they would know to move away from the expletive shouting people near this person and just get something to eat? Maybe this would happen if they heard bat food being fried up in the kitchen.
Because mammalian brains have great inter-species similarities, these findings are probably relevant for the human brain, too. The superior colliculus is known to be involved in directing eye movements in humans
(Sarcasm Alert) Well, if a part of a brain in a brown bat enables it to pick out sounds and focus on them, it must then mean the same part of the brain in humans enables eye movements in humans to be directed. Huh? Too bad they didn't explain how all this is connected to people being able to pay attention better. I thought they'd have something that made sense like how brown bats can help people focus on what was on the grocery shopping list they forgot or where exactly someone put their car keys the night before. That would have been a study that could have provided some serious improvements in society.
I believe that the results we found for auditory selectivity do indeed apply to other sensory systems, such as selecting a stimulus for visual orientation."
What exactly does this mean? Are they trying to say you'll be able to focus on the word bingo, hear it spoken in the distance and be able to find a place where people are playing bingo? After reading this study, I would not be surprised if brown bats were just making lots of money from bingo halls around the country.
Here is a link to the story.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/307110.php
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