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Thanks for visiting my blog. Hope you find some helpful hints for organizing your time and space. My passions are to help you make home a refuge instead of a crisis center, and to help you function in peace rather than chaos - at home or at work. I have switched my main blog to 1-2-3 ... Get Organized on WordPress, so please visit me there.



Thursday, April 28, 2011

New Data Sheds Light On The Cause Of 'Brain Clutter'

          
RTTNews ran the following article yesterday, which I thought was very informative. I hope you enjoy it.  I'm fascinated by ADD research and try to keep up with it, as we always have girls with ADD in our home. Plus ADD has an impact on organizing one's time or space.

"New data collected by a research team at McGill University in Montreal has discovered the lack of attention common in patients of ADHD, OCD and Tourette syndrome could be linked to the malfunctioning of one specific type of brain cell.

This lack of focus, commonly referred to as 'brain clutter,' has previously been thought of as a default in the brain's prefrontal cortex, but now researcher Julio Martinez-Trujillo is suggesting that the malfunctioning of neurons that normally help filter information may be to blame.

'Contrary to common beliefs, the brain has a limited processing capacity. It can only effectively process about one per cent of the visual information that it takes in,' Martinez-Trujilo tells sciencedaily.com. 'This means that the neurons responsible for perceiving objects and programming actions must constantly compete with one another to access the important information.'

For the study, Martinez-Trujilo and his team examined the ability of animals to process visual stimuli. They then analyzed the performance of these neurons depending on each animal's ability to filter information. 'What we found when we looked at the behaviour of the neurons in the prefrontal cortex, was that an animal's ability to successfully accomplish a single action in the presence of visual clutter, was dictated by how well these units suppressed distracting information,' he adds."

More on ADD:

Organizing the ADD Household

Understanding the ADD Mindset

More Tips for Helping Your ADD Child Stay Organized