Researchers at the University of Michigan, led by Daniel Weissman, studied the interactions that occur between multiple areas of the brain when boredom sets in, and discovered that, as attention fades, so does the intensity at which several nervous centers communicate. The results were obtained by keeping volunteers into MRI chambers and subjecting them to tedious tasks for prolonged periods of time.
The researcher set out to study exactly what happens inside the brain when boredom sets in because he noticed how, during a repetitive activity, people simply seem to disconnect their brains and pay little attention to the thing they are doing, provided that they have the experience to complete it blindfolded.
Weissman placed several volunteers inside a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) room, and asked them to perform a boring task, namely identify letters that appeared on the walls, for about an hour. He and his team noticed that, from time to time, the attention levels of the participants spiked, so they analyzed those moments to see exactly what happened when their concentration gave way.
They noticed that areas of the brain closely related to self-control, vision and language processing seemed to seize most activity – this gap triggered inattention and boredom. "Attention failed to grease the connections in the brain," the scientist says, arguing that attention usually acts as an "amplifier" between certain areas of the brain at a time.
When the amplifier "switches" to new connections, it causes the deterioration of the existing ones, thus leaving a person inattentive or bored. The researchers also learned that when these lapses occurred in the brain, several portions of the cortex "lit up," showing signs of increased activity. They are currently trying to use the new discoveries to predict brain behavior based on what regions show increased activity at a given time.
"We're using brain signals to predict behavior in the future," Weissman concludes.
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