美国《科学新闻》周刊报道，容易分心的人可以不必再将注意力的缺乏归咎于王室婚礼和“脸谱”网了。根据5月4日出版的一期《神经科学期刊》 The Journal of Neuroscience ，研究人员认为真正的罪魁祸首也许是大脑左后方的一些脑细胞。
文章说：“了解脑部如何关注重要的事情（同时滤除干扰）也许有助于科学家找到对付注意力欠缺的方法。”
英国伯明翰大学的认知神经科学家卡梅尔·梅沃拉克没有参与这项研究，他说：“注意力对我们的生活有着巨大的影响。实际上，我们所做的每一件事都受到注意力的影响。”
报告的撰写人之一、伦敦大学学院的金井良太说，在当前这个信息超负荷的年代，集中注意力并非易事，有些人尤其容易分神。金井和同事想知道脑部结构的不同能否解释为什么有的人容易分心，而另外一些人则可以全神贯注。
研究人员请145名志愿者填写一张认知失误调查表，让填写者评估自己出现脑力差错的频率，比如忘了要去商店买什么东西，或者撞上了别人。通过志愿者的回答可以评估他们在日常生活中是否容易出现注意力不集中的问题。
脑部扫描结果发现，爱分心与不爱分心的人确实存在着差异，前者左侧头部顶叶皮层区域的组织密度更大，表明有更多的神经细胞。
很难集中注意力的人其实拥有更多的脑组织，这样的研究结果有点出人意料，不过脑组织并非多多益善。金井说，随着脑部逐渐成熟，一些不相干的神经细胞连接点会被去除，而容易分心的人可能缺失了对于控制注意力来说非常重要的脑部精简过程。
原文出处：
The Journal of Neuroscience, 4 May 2011, 31（18）: 6620-6626; doi: 10.1523/?JNEUROSCI.5864-10.2011
Distractibility in Daily Life Is Reflected in the Structure and Function of Human Parietal Cortex
Ryota Kanai1, Mia Yuan Dong2, Bahador Bahrami1,3,4,5, and Geraint Rees1,3
Abstract
We all appreciate that some of our friends and colleagues are more distractible than others. This variability can be captured by pencil and paper questionnaires in which individuals report such cognitive failures in their everyday life. Surprisingly, these self-report measures have high heritability, leading to the hypothesis that distractibility might have a basis in brain structure. In a large sample of healthy adults, we demonstrated that a simple self-report measure of everyday distractibility accuray predicted gray matter volume in a remarkably focal region of left superior parietal cortex. This region must play a causal role in reducing distractibility, because we found that disrupting its function with transcranial magnetic stimulation increased susceptibility to distraction. Finally, we showed that the self-report measure of distractibility reliably predicted our laboratory-based measure of attentional capture. Our findings distinguish a critical mechanism in the human brain causally involved in avoiding distractibility, which, importantly, bridges self-report judgments of cognitive failures in everyday life and a commonly used laboratory measure of distractibility to the structure of the human brain.
