People With Lots Of Working Memory Are Not Easily Distracted

"That blasted siren. I can't focus." That reaction to undesired distraction may signal a person's low working-memory capacity, according to a new study.

Based on a study of 84 students divided into four separate experiments, University of Oregon researchers found that students with high memory storage capacity were clearly better able to ignore distractions and stay focused on their assigned tasks.

Principal investigator Edward K. Vogel, a UO professor of psychology, compares working memory to a computer's random-access memory (RAM) rather than the hard drive's size -- the higher the RAM, the better processing abilities. With more RAM, he said, students were better able to ignore distractions. This notion surfaced in a 2005 paper in Nature by Vogel and colleagues in the Oregon Visual Working Memory & Attention Lab.

In experiments with some variations in approaches -- detailed in the July 8 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience -- students' brain activity was monitored using electroencephalography (EEG) while they studied images on a computer screen, recognizing a shape with a missing component, and then identifying the object after it moved simply to another location or amid distractions. Using a "task irrelevant probe" -- a 50 millisecond-long flash of light -- Vogel and Keisuke Fukuda, a doctoral student of Vogel's and lead author, were able to determine where exactly a subject's attention was focused.

All of the subjects were able to quickly and accurately identify the targets when the objects moved around the screen, but as distracting components were added some maintained accuracy while others diverted their attention and slipped in performing the assigned tasks.

Vogel is quick to say that the findings don't necessarily signify problems for an easily distracted person, although people who hold their focus more intensely tend to have higher fluid intelligence; they score higher on achievement tests, do better in math and learn second languages easier than peers who are captured by interruptions. Vogel currently is working with other UO researchers to explore if the easily distracted indeed have a positive side, such as in artistic creativity and imagination.

The new research, funded by the National Science Foundation, zeroed in on the brain's prefrontal cortex -- a region linked to executive function and under scrutiny for its association with many neurological disorders -- and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), which is involved in perceptual-motor coordination, including eye movements.

The IPS, Vogel said, acts as a pointer system that seeks out goal-related cues, and it possibly is the gateway for memory circuitry in the brain.

"Our attention is the continual interplay between what our goals are and what the environment is trying to dictate to us," Vogel said. "Often, to be able to complete complex and important goal-directed behavior, we need to be able to ignore salient but irrelevant things, such as advertisements flashing around an article you are trying to read on a computer screen. We found that some people are really good at overriding attention capture, and other people have a difficult time unhooking from it and are really susceptible to irrelevant stimuli."

Vogel theorizes that people who are good at staying on focus have a good gatekeeper, much like a bouncer or ticket-taker hired to allow only approved people into a nightclub or concert. Understanding how to improve the gatekeeper component, he said, could lead to therapies that help easily distracted people better process what information is allowed in initially, rather than attempting to teach people how to force more information into their memory banks.

Cortesy: ScienceDaily

Itch-specific Neurons Identified In Mice Offers Hope For Better Treatments

Historically, many scientists have regarded itching as just a less intense version of pain. They have spent decades searching for itch-specific nerve cells to explain how the brain perceives itch differently from pain, but none have been found.

Now researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that those itch-specific neurons do exist in mice, and their studies suggest that itch and pain signals are transmitted along different pathways in the spinal cord. Reporting in the Aug. 6 issue of Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science, the researchers say they can knock out an animal's itch response without affecting its ability to sense and attempt to avoid pain.

"This finding has very important therapeutic implications," says Zhou-Feng Chen, Ph.D., the study's principal investigator. "We've shown that particular neurons are critical for the itching sensation but not for pain, which means those cells may contain several itch-specific receptors or signaling molecules that can be explored or identified as targets for future treatment or management of chronic itching."

The new finding follows research by Chen and his team in 2007 that identified the first itch gene — gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR) — in the spinal cord. They also showed that when mice were exposed to things that make them itchy, those without a GRPR gene scratched less than their normal littermates. Chen's team also found GRPR in a group of spinal-cord cells called lamina 1 neurons that relay both itch and pain sensations to the brain.

"But the identification of an itch receptor in spinal-cord neurons didn't mean those neurons were itch-specific because it was possible that they also could have pain-related genes," says Chen, associate professor of anesthesiology, of psychiatry and of developmental biology. "A key question was whether those GRPR neurons also were transmitting pain signals. We approached that question by injecting a toxic substance that binds to GRPR and then exposing mice to both itchy and painful stimuli."

Chen's team injected the spinal cords of mice with a neurotoxin called bombesin-saporin. It bound to GRPR and killed the neurons where the gene was expressed. When these mice then were exposed to things that caused itching, they didn't scratch. With an appropriate dose of the neurotoxin, their scratching could be reduced by more than 80 percent or completely eliminated in some instances. That finding proved that the neurons with GRPR were required for normal itch sensation.

There are two major types of itching that are classified according to the presence or absence of the chemical histamine. Histamine-dependent itching can be caused by bug bites or allergic reactions. It is treated with antihistamine drugs, such as Benadryl®. Most chronic, severe itching, however, is resistant to antihistamine treatment. But in this study, it made no difference whether mice were exposed to histamines or to other itch-inducing substances. Those mice whose GRPR-expressing neurons had been destroyed by the neurotoxin didn't scratch, regardless of what type of itchy agent they encountered.

"However, the same mice continued to respond normally to pain," Chen says. "This is a very striking and unexpected result because it suggests there is an itch-specific neuronal pathway in the spinal cord."

Further tests showed that other neurologic functions, such as motor control were not affected by the destruction of the GRPR-expressing neurons.

Whereas Chen's earlier work found that pain and itch are regulated through different molecular pathways, this study suggests they also are regulated through different cellular pathways. That, he says, could have important implications for treating itch because the neurons with GRPR may contain more itch-specific genes.

"We've shown that these GRPR neurons are important for itching sensation and not for pain, but we really don't know much more about them," Chen says. "We still have a lot of questions, and we are very interested to find more answers."

Funding for this research comes from a grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

Journal references:

1. Sun YG, Zhao ZQ, MengXL, Yin J, Liu XY, Chen ZF. Cellular basis of itch sensation. Science, Aug. 7, 2009
2. Sun YG, Chen ZF. A gastrin-releasing peptide receptor mediates the itch sensation in the spinal cord. Nature, Online July 25, 2007; (448), pp. 700-703. Aug. 9, 2007 DOI: 10.1038/nature06029