Edward Hallowell talks eloquently about Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD. In fact, I understand that he's the one who coined the term in the first place in 1995. Now he's written a new book, CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone A.D.D.

According to Overly Wired? There's a Word for It Hallowell sees the idea spreading far and wide:

The frenzy of our wired world, he argues, is giving nearly all of us the symptoms of attention deficit disorder.

Playfully, Hallowell suggests some names for this harried condition. Screensucking, Email voice, Frazzing and Gemmelsmerch among them.

Columnist Lisa Belkin is not content to stop there, suggesting her own ideas: Spammified, Cellopain, Regurgimailer, Reverberon, Telamnesia, and Bluetooth fairy.

Probably if you can think up terms like these, you don't have the underlying condition.

The official brain syndrome of our age earlier on this blog focused on how the human brain can get overloaded and the undesirable results of that.

Why can't you pay attention anymore? takes it a bit further with an interview with ADD expert Edward Hallowell, author and psychiatrist. In this interview, Hallowell talks about something different from ADD, a work overload that ain't any good for you either. Hallowell makes a distinction between this and ADD:

In ADD--the true ADD--it doesn't go away, wherever you go. So I realized that these people were having it induced by their work world. When they got to work, then symptoms would start to occur. So that meant that something was going on at work. That something is this overload.

He also put a different slant on the idea of multitasking: mainly, there's no such thing:

No one really multitasks. You just spend less time on any one thing. When it looks like you're multitasking--you're looking at one TV screen and another TV screen and you're talking on the telephone--your attention has to shift from one to the other. You're brain literally can't multitask. You can't pay attention to two things simultaneously. You're switching back and forth between the two. So you're paying less concerted attention to either one.

Overall, an interesting read - if you're paying attention.

Can you close your eyes and then touch the tip of your nose with your right index finger? No big deal there for most of us. The nervous system function behind that ability is called proprioception. It's the sense of where you are in space, and how all the parts of you coordinate together to do the stuff you need to do.

It's tempting to think of proprioception as a sense unique to humans, or at least to mammals. But would you believe that tiny worms have it too? The sixth sense your place in space summarizes some recently published research about finding neurons in the tiny worm that probably regulate stretch receptors that regulate movement.

Ultimately, this sort of finding could have benefits for dealing with movement disorders like Parkinson's disease:

They (the researchers) have recently discovered some neurons that possibly regulate stretch receptors which tell the body how to move. For patients with Parkinson 's disease, these stretch receptors are thought to be involved in the loss of movement control, so finding a neuron that can tweak these signals could be a step towards developing new Parkinson 's treatments.

On the other hand, I've never seen a worm touch its nose. (Do worms have noses?)

A previous post here mentioned how brain plasticity is being tapped in developing therapy applications like constraint-induced movement therapy. Teaching the brain to see -- Newsday.com takes this idea into another sort of rehab. Dr. Randolph Marshall, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center is testing a computer program on people who have lost some of their eye sight to stroke or other brain trauma. It's a natural follow on to the movement stuff:

The idea of strengthening the visual areas of the brain was born out of work done on stroke patients to strengthen weakened limbs. By tying down the stronger arm, the patient's weaker arm was trained to move more robustly. The brain's motor system was actually repairing itself.

The computer program works by having patients focus on an on-screen dot, and pressing various keys in reaction to shapes that move around the screen. They spend lots of time doing this, twice a day six days a week. And they have to do it for six months.

Time spent with the computer seems to be helping. Marshall reports 65 percent show improvement, with blind fields reduced by 20%.

This is plasticity at work again.

We are now trying to figure out what is going on in the brain," said Marshall, who is working with the makers of the device, Nova Vision, to design ways to measure brain plasticity or ability to self-repair. "We think that parts of the brain are taking over for the damaged areas."

Is impulsiveness always a bad thing? It doesn't serve (or not serve) everybody the same way, according to Living on Impulse in New York Times. Many find the destructive part of it, while others can act spontaneously without going overboard. What's the difference? It seems to have something to do with an ability to hedge:

The people who can binge, gamble or try hard drugs and get away with it have a native cunning when it comes to risk, this and other studies suggest. They are prepared for the dangers like a mountain climber or they sample risk, in effect, by semiconsciously hedging their behavior — sipping their cocktails slowly, inhaling partly or keeping one toe on the cliff's edge, poised for retreat.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the mountain climber in The Practice of Slowness post earlier. It seems to me not only an ability to hedge, but a willingness to do it; to take the risk but also know the quick way back to safe ground.

Those who are upended by their own impulses, by contrast, are more likely to trust their first impressions implicitly and absolutely, the studies suggest.

Maybe sticking a toe in the water before wading in isn't such a silly thing.

Wired News: Now That's Using Your Brain describes a system that lets people compose and send e-mail merely by thinking about it. Great. Now spammers and phishers can just think your inbox full of junk!

But there's a much more benign application: people who have lost muscular control of their hands and can't type or speak. The new system described in the article uses a cap of probes and a laptop to allow them to compose using their eyes and brains.

We've all seen people do seemingly too many things at the same time: sometimes we do it ourselves. Psychiatrist Richard Restak recently gave a talk about what makes the brain capable of this kind of multiple stuff (The brain is adaptable - to a point in the Chico Enterprise Record)

The brain's ability to adapt to the stresses of the modern age — and other changes — is based on its plasticity, Restak said. "The brain mostly talks to itself," he said. "It develops and evolves, not by growing new cells, not by getting bigger, but by setting up circuits. The more things we do and the more things we learn, the more circuits we establish."

Like most things, how useful this is depends on context. For example there's a recently-developed therapy practice that harnesses plasticity to help recover limb function after a brain injury:

One of the most promising applications based on the growing evidence of the brain's plasticity is constraint-induced movement therapy, Restak said. It's being used to rehabilitate the paralyzed arms of stroke patients. It involves constraining the less-affected arm while intensively training the use of the other arm. "This is very recent," he said. "It makes so much sense once you understand how it is possible for the brain to reorganize itself."

But sometimes the ability to adapt can stretch pretty thin. Then the context can get kinda strange.

As "multitasking" becomes not only a way of life but a valued workplace skill, "attention deficit disorder is not so much a disease but a prerequisite for enduring the present life we're in," Restak said. "It's the official brain syndrome of our age."

But it's not always a great thing:

Restak said he recently encountered a woman talking on a cell phone while pushing her child in a stroller. The lesson she was teaching the child was that "an unseen person on the other end of a cell phone can exert a greater influence on one's immediate surroundings than the person who is right there."

Unless the kid's brain can adapt to it.

Sometimes writing can be dark and light at the same time. One I ran across recently is Gray Area:Thinking with a Damaged Brain. Author Floyd Skloot gives a well-written account of what it's like to live a creative life with a brain noticeably damaged by a virus almost 20 years ago.

Skloot goes on (and on) about the frustrating everyday experiences he's enduring as a result of the damage. But he also reveals some gems along the way, like how he's learned to manage some of his creative activities:

The duel is fought over and over. I have developed certain habits that enable me to work — a team of seconds, to elaborate this metaphor of a duel. I must be willing to write slowly, to skip or leave blank spaces where I cannot find words that I seek, compose in fragments and without an overall ordering principle or imposed form. I explore and make discoveries in my writing now, never quite sure where I am going but willing to let things ride and discover later how they all fit together. Every time I finish an essay or poem or piece of fiction, it feels as though I have faced down the insult.

and;

In many important respects, then, I have already gotten better. I continue to learn new ways of living with a damaged brain. I continue to make progress, to avenge the insult, to see my way around the gray area. But no, I am not going to be the man I was. In this, I am hardly alone.

Reading the essay is not always easy going, but it's worth taking a peek at this guy's clearly-written experiences.

Move around a little as you read this -- wave your arm, wiggle your ears, lift a foot, whatever. Did you feel the movement of the part you chose to move? Almost certainly. But how did you know you were moving that part? Believe it or not, that's a question that has puzzled scientists for over a century.

Where does the sense of movement live? Is it in the receptors in the joints or muscles, in the brain itself, or somewhere in between in the nervous tissues? Maybe a combination of all of these?

A small study in Australia suggests that merely the intention to move can produce a sensation of real movement -- even when real movement isn't even possible.

(Simon) Gandevia's (of the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Sydney, Australia) team studied eight volunteers, by either anaesthetising their forearm and hand, or restricting the flow of blood to the limb. Both techniques deadened sensation to the extent that the volunteers felt they had a "phantom" hand with fingers clenched, though in fact their fingers were fully extended. When they were asked to flex or extend their wrists, they consistently reported that the position of their hand had changed, in the direction of their efforts, even though it did not move. When they were asked to increase their efforts, the perceived change also increased.

The relationship between sensing and moving seems commonsense. But, here in this limited study, it seems both the sensing and moving are illusions, though the experience of intended movement makes a apparent appearance. Perhaps this is an instance of plasticity at work -- rapid experience-based changes in the nervous system, but fueled by thought alone.

This is not unlike phantom limb sensations that can bother amputees. But it kind of surprises me that it can happen so rapidly in those who aren't amputees.

Can you tell if a piece of fruit is ripe or overripe by sight alone? While dark bananas or green oranges obviously fail the optimal ripeness test, most of the time we need to employ other senses to help us decide. Squeezing, smelling, thumping, or tasting can help determine if the fruit is suitable for eating now, needs to ripen a bit or be tossed onto the compost heap.

Most of us take for granted this ability of our brains to mesh information from multiple senses into a cohesive whole. It doesn't take a heck of a lot of human intelligence to do this neural juggling act effortlessly, without having to think about it. No need to go back to fruit school each time we pack our lunch.

But even the most sophisticated intelligent machines struggle when it comes to perceiving and adapting to their environments. They can be reprogrammed to accomplish this sensory fusion, but that kind of defeats the idea of adaptability (and makes for lots of programming overtime, too.)

A group of European scientists have taken on the challenge of investigating how to teach intelligent machines perceive and adapt to their environments by simultaneously using multiple senses. (See Biology inspires perceptive machines. for a somewhat technical summary of their doings.)

The article details how the scientific team based its modeling on a sophisticated type of neural network based on something called spiking neurons. The team believes these types of circuits process information kind of like a biological brain might. And, if I'm reading it right, these types of circuits exploit a kind of neural plasticity:

Similarly, adaptation is another aspect of the biological model, known as plasticity, where data flows through new routes in the brain to add further resources to data capture. If repeated over time, this plasticity becomes learning, where well-travelled routes through the brain become established and reinforce the information that passes.

So, looks like theres lots of work to be done before the singularity arrives and we begin sending our intelligent agents out for fresh fruit.

For a take on the idea of machine perception and motion (among other things), have a look at Why Robots Fall Down.

I was just reading about some new research when the cat jumped onto my desk and distracted me. Then the phone rang, new email arrived, and I decided to update my RSS feed reader with the latest news. It was a while before I got back to the research.

Kind of ironic because the research deals with how aging effects how easily we get distracted. Why the Aging Mind is Driven to Distraction describes the study done at the University of Toronto and the Rotman Research Institute, and published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

The researchers put forth the idea that aging, starting at about 40, interrupts a balance between two brain regions dealing with attention span.

"It's known that older adults are more easily distracted. We think we've found a mechanism in the brain to explain this," (lead researcher Cheryl L.) Grady said. "The functional changes are detectable by middle age."

Maybe so. But what about the role of learning and environment in all this? Even Grady concedes that learning might have something to do with it.

Grady, however, suggested that people in their 20s today — their brains molded by instant messaging and all of the other high-technology of the short attention span — may be better able to manage unwarranted interruptions when they reach old age.

"If you are a 20-year-old today," Grady said, "you may find it easier to deal with distraction when you are 60 because you have had so much practice."

I noted a couple of things here. Since the study used brain imaging to discover what was going on, it might not be revealing the whole picture. See Searching for the Person in the Brain. And the idea that culture is presenting many more things to keep track of in less time is nicely dealt with in the Steven Johnson book Everything Bad is Good for You.

Now where was I?