美國《科學新聞》周刊報道，容易分心的人可以不必再將注意力的缺乏歸咎于王室婚禮和“臉譜”網了。根據5月4日出版的一期《神經科學期刊》 The Journal of Neuroscience ，研究人員認為真正的罪魁禍首也許是大腦左后方的一些腦細胞。
文章說：“了解腦部如何關注重要的事情（同時濾除干擾）也許有助于科學家找到對付注意力欠缺的方法。”
英國伯明翰大學的認知神經科學家卡梅爾·梅沃拉克沒有參與這項研究，他說：“注意力對我們的生活有著巨大的影響。實際上，我們所做的每一件事都受到注意力的影響。”
報告的撰寫人之一、倫敦大學學院的金井良太說，在當前這個信息超負荷的年代，集中注意力并非易事，有些人尤其容易分神。金井和同事想知道腦部結構的不同能否解釋為什么有的人容易分心，而另外一些人則可以全神貫注。
研究人員請145名志愿者填寫一張認知失誤調查表，讓填寫者評估自己出現腦力差錯的頻率，比如忘了要去商店買什么東西，或者撞上了別人。通過志愿者的回答可以評估他們在日常生活中是否容易出現注意力不集中的問題。
腦部掃描結果發現，愛分心與不愛分心的人確實存在著差異，前者左側頭部頂葉皮層區域的組織密度更大，表明有更多的神經細胞。
很難集中注意力的人其實擁有更多的腦組織，這樣的研究結果有點出人意料，不過腦組織并非多多益善。金井說，隨著腦部逐漸成熟，一些不相干的神經細胞連接點會被去除，而容易分心的人可能缺失了對于控制注意力來說非常重要的腦部精簡過程。
原文出處：
The Journal of Neuroscience, 4 May 2011, 31（18）: 6620-6626; doi: 10.1523/?JNEUROSCI.5864-10.2011
Distractibility in Daily Life Is Reflected in the Structure and Function of Human Parietal Cortex
Ryota Kanai1, Mia Yuan Dong2, Bahador Bahrami1,3,4,5, and Geraint Rees1,3
Abstract
We all appreciate that some of our friends and colleagues are more distractible than others. This variability can be captured by pencil and paper questionnaires in which individuals report such cognitive failures in their everyday life. Surprisingly, these self-report measures have high heritability, leading to the hypothesis that distractibility might have a basis in brain structure. In a large sample of healthy adults, we demonstrated that a simple self-report measure of everyday distractibility accuray predicted gray matter volume in a remarkably focal region of left superior parietal cortex. This region must play a causal role in reducing distractibility, because we found that disrupting its function with transcranial magnetic stimulation increased susceptibility to distraction. Finally, we showed that the self-report measure of distractibility reliably predicted our laboratory-based measure of attentional capture. Our findings distinguish a critical mechanism in the human brain causally involved in avoiding distractibility, which, importantly, bridges self-report judgments of cognitive failures in everyday life and a commonly used laboratory measure of distractibility to the structure of the human brain.
