The Rough Guide to Psychology An Introduction to Human Behaviour and the Mind (Rough Guides)

YOUR BRAIN

dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (DLPFC) increased substantially more
than when they read passages of text laid out like a book. The DLPFC
brain region is associated with sustained attention and thoughtful anal-
ysis – so increased activity here is hardly what you’d expect for an activity
that some say is making us stupid.

The conscious brain

How does the physical brain give rise to the subjective experience of
consciousness? This question is at the very frontier of psychology and
neuroscience and is usually seen as consisting of two separate prob-
lems, one more difficult than the other. The easier problem concerns

found that those allocated to a six-month home exercise programme

(at least three fifty-minute sessions per week of moderate physical

activity, such as walking) subsequently showed modestly improved

mental performance over an eighteen-month follow-up period

compared with control participants who weren’t enrolled on the

programme.

4. Meditate Meditation can give you more control over your brain’s
   limited resources. Usually, if you present people with a stream of
   letters and ask them to watch out for two numbers embedded in
   that stream, they’ll spot the first, but if the second number comes too
   soon after the first, they’ll completely miss it. This is called the “atten-
   tional blink” and it occurs because for a brief period – the “blink”
   
   
   • people allocate all their attention to the first number. In 2007,
     the cognitive neuroscientist Heleen Slagter, and her colleagues,
     showed that the attentional blink was reduced among partici-
     pants who’d been on a three-month meditation retreat. They’d
     practised Vipassana meditation, which teaches people non-reactive
     awareness or “bare” attention.
   
   
   
   


5. Play video games It’s the perfect excuse for an afternoon on the
   video games console. Research has shown that habitual game
   players have superior mental abilities, including enhanced visual
   attention, when compared with non-players. It’s not just that people
   with certain cognitive skills choose to play games. In their 2003 study,
   Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier recruited non-game players, and
   showed that ten days spent playing an action video game (Medal
   of Honor) boosted their visual attention skills relative to a group of
   control participants who spent the same time playing the puzzle
   game Tetris.