BENGALURU: A research group at the Centre for Neuroscience and the Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), are working to identify the reasons and mechanisms of attention in the human brain and see if through training, a person’s attention span increases to the desired level.
This research will benefit many companies, students etc make gains on focus, learning and attention. It may also lead to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms of attention deficit in various cognitive disorders such as attention deficit disorder (ADD) and autism.
“Extensive research has revealed that paying attention produces diverse effects on individual neurons and neural populations in the brain. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which these effects emerge, and whether these are causally linked to behaviour.
“The research seeks to identify the causal role of specific brain regions and brain oscillations in attention,” said Dr Sridharan Devarajan, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Automation, and chief scientist of the research. He is among the 17 in the country to be granted the Swarnajayanthi fellowship by the Centre for this research.
Dr Sridharan says human attention is such that when there is an important conversation between two individuals, even in a crowded area, the brain can pay attention to something important and ignore information that is not relevant. “How does it do that, is the general objective of the research,” he said.
However, the scientists will delve a bit deeper by using slightly sophisticated brain machine interfaces to understand attention more deeply.
Subjects will be trained to control brain activity or oscillations (shifts) in specific brain areas and check if such neuro feedback control affects attention behaviourally. Once this is studied and achieved, the person can be given attention tasks. The research is said to most benefit those who have ADD, establishments/facilities dealing with such people and even healthy individuals.
“This mechanism can be used by normally healthy people too. They could absorb even better abilities to pay attention. In the West, there are certain medications or drugs which allow them to focus better and study. But the side-effects are not known. But technology like this will be much safer as there is no injecting any external substance going into the body,” he said.
The study is expected to complete in the next two to three years.