The way in which the brain reconfigures its connections to minimize distractions and take best advantage of our knowledge of situations has been demystified

For example, a flashing road sign alerts us to traffic merging ahead; or a startled animal might cue you to look out for a hidden predator.
When concentrating on a specific task, it's helpful to reconfigure brain networks so that task-relevant information is processed most efficiently and external distractions are reduced, Geng found.
Geng and co-author Nicholas DiQuattro, a graduate student in psychology, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity in volunteers carrying out a simple test.
They compared their results to mathematical models to infer connectivity between different areas of the brain.
The subjects had to look for a letter "T" in a box and indicate which way it faced by pressing a button. They were also presented with a "distractor": another letter T in a box, but rotated 90 degrees.
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Subjects did better in trials with an "attention-getting" distractor than a less obvious one, and lit up specific areas of the brain accordingly.
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Instead, it changes how traffic moves through the existing hard-wired network-rather like changing water flow through a network of pipes or information flow over a computer network-in order to maximize efficiency.
The study appeared in the Dec. 7 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Source-ANI