Easily Distracted People May Have 'Too Much Brain'

fysdt writes with this excerpt from New Scientist: "Those who are easily distracted from the task in hand may have 'too much brain.' So says Ryota Kanai and his colleagues at University College London, who found larger than average volumes of grey matter in certain brain regions in those whose attention is readily diverted. To investigate distractibility, the team compared the brains of easy and difficult-to-distract individuals. [Abstract] They assessed each person's distractibility by quizzing them about how often they fail to notice road signs, or go into a supermarket and become sidetracked to the point that they forget what they came in to buy. The most distractible individuals received the highest score."

Comments

Re:ADHD

[Locke2005]

Actually, ADHD is normal. It would be required to survive in a jungle environment, where virtually anything could be a threat to you, so you need to keep flitting your attention from one thing to another to survive. The ability to stay focused on one thing to the exclusion of all others for a significant period of time is a relatively recent development in humans which is only useful in an academic environment where what you learn and when you learn it is dictated by others. In an ideal society, it shouldn't be necessary for everyone to have exactly the same executive function capabilities.