What Makes Some Brains More Focused Than Others? | Marvin Chun | TEDxKFAS

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Faced with overwhelming amounts of information and an increasing need to multitask, how can our brains focus on important tasks and avoid distractions? Cognitive neuroscience researcher Dr. Marvin Myungwoo Chun discusses why some people are more attentive than others, allowing them to perform better at school, sports, and in the workplace. He also reveals the difference in our brains that explain superior performance, and gives tips on how to enhance our focus.

Dr. Marvin Myungwoo Chun is a cognitive neuroscience researcher and psychology professor and received the highest teaching prize at Yale University. He is the Richard M. Colgate Professor of Psychology at Yale, with joint appointments in the Cognitive Science Program and the School of Medicine Department of Neurobiology. He also serves as the John B. Madden Master of Berkeley College. He received his B.A. from Yonsei University, his Ph.D. from MIT and his postdoctoral training at Harvard. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and as a scientific advisor on the NIKE (Sport) Performance Council.

For me, smart living has to start
with being productive.

How many of you
would like to be more productive?

If you are a student,
you would like to get better grades

without having to work harder.

If you have a job, you want to be
more productive in your work,

you want to gain
more recognition for your work,

without having to put more hours,

because everyone has
the same twenty-four hours a day.

And there are many ways
to be more productive.

But the one way that
I'm going to talk about in my session

is how you can improve your focus,
and how you can improve your attention,

and what psychology and neuroscience

have to say to improve
your focus and attention.

The big challenge that faces all of us,
especially in modern society,

is that there's too much information.

It's both a blessing, but also a curse,

that we have access
to infinite amounts of information;

all the knowledge
that has been produced by humankind

is at the end of your thumbs
just by opening up your phone.

And again it's a huge privilege,

and we're very lucky
to be in this kind of era.

But on the other hand,

it's very hard to choose, and it's very
hard to decide where to start,

because we are constantly confronted
with too much information.

Secondly, we also distract ourselves.
It's hard to focus on our own.

One good example is that you commonly see
people walking down the street

with their eyes glued to their phone.

And, of course, they're somewhat
oblivious to their surroundings.

See he's coming to the door and boom,

he just hits the door,
walks right into it.

In the next video is a woman walking
in a mall checking out her cell phone.

And you can see that she fell
straight into that fountain.

Okay? So, you know,
we distract ourselves all the time,

making us oblivious to our surroundings.

These are comical examples,

but, of course, there are
more serious dangerous examples.

For instance, if you're driving a train,
an engineer driving a train,

and you lose your focus
for even just a few seconds,

then if you don't slow down your speed

your train is going to run off
the tracks to very dangerous effect.

So these are just a few examples
of how we are overloaded with information

and how we distract ourselves.

And so the question is:
How can we improve our focus?

We are living in what John Cassidy
of "The New Yorker" magazine

calls the "attention deficit
disorder economy"

or the "attention deficit
disorder society."

And the consequences of that
we're still trying to understand.

We know that it means
that we're a little less focused,

more distracted, we may be more shallow.

This overwhelming information
may make us less productive.

And as I just pointed out over here,
it can also lead to dangerous situations.

The economic cost of attention deficit

has been estimated to be even up to about
$200 billion in the United States alone.

These are serious problems
that affect our productivity.

So here's an example.

I want to see how well you can attend
at the beginning of my talk.

This is a video, and your task is
to focus on the team with white clothes

and ignore the team
with black clothes, Okay?

They're going to run around the screen,

and your task is to count

how many times they're passing the ball
to other players on the screen,

other white players,
white T-shirt players, on the screen.

Okay, count it quietly in your head,

and then at the end I'm going to ask you
to yell out the answer.

So count how many times
the white T-shirt team

passes the ball to other
players on its team.

And it's important to do this
as quietly as possible.

Don't laugh, don't cough or talk

because that's going to hurt
other people's concentration.

Okay. So here's our first
attention deficit test.

Here we go. One, two, three.

Video: How many passes
does the team in white make?

Go!

Marvin Chun: Okay, what was the answer?
How many times? Thirteen? Thirteen?

Excellent, you guys have great attention
and that's really fantastic.

We're off to a good start.

Now some of you may have seen this video
because it's on YouTube,

and it's a pretty well-known one.

But if you've never seen
this video before,

please raise your hand up
as high as you can.

Look around, most of you
haven't seen the video.

Keep your hands up high, please.

Now there was actually
something else going on in this video,

and you can lower your hands
- keep your hands up please -

you can lower your hand
if you saw a dancing bear.

But if you did not see the dancing bear,
keep your hands up,

look around, you're not alone.

Most of you have missed
a very critical part of this video.

So now you can lower your hand.

You're not alone.
Let's watch the video again, no counting.

Just watch the video now.

Okay so now no counting.

Video: How many passes
does the team in white make?

Marvin Chun: And just watch.

As you were monitoring
the white T-shirt team,

on the right, this guy
in a bear suit comes out,

and he does this kind of dance. Right?

And then moonwalks out.

And the good majority of you,
the very smart group of people,

totally missed this very obvious
feature of the video. Okay?

On the one hand that means
that your attention is really good,

because you did not, you know,
see something

that I didn't ask you to look for.

But on the other hand,
it really highlights

how limited your ability to see the world,
and to experience the world, is.

Our brains are limited.

And that's the point
I'm trying to make with this video.

In fact, we studied this
in my own laboratory at Yale

in collaboration with one of my former
postdoc students, Yao Daju,

who is now a professor
at Harvard University.

We conducted this study
where we asked people

to do something very simple:

Just look at these shapes
shown there on the left.

And we asked them to attend to the shapes,

and try to remember them
for like two seconds.

And sometimes they have to remember one;
sometimes they have to remember two;

sometimes they have to remember three.

Very simple task.

People have no trouble attending to
and remembering one of the objects. Okay?

And we also measured
what their brains are doing

while they're looking at this task
and doing this task.

And that line on the bottom
with the light green

shows what happens when
people are attending to,

and remembering, just one item.

The brain doesn't have to work too hard
and people do super well.

They're almost perfect in the task.

But once you increase it
to two items or three items,

you can see in the darker lines
on the graph,

your brain has to work harder.

And not only does your brain have to
work harder, the performance drops.

People start making mistakes.

Even for something this simple.

Basically your brain can
handle only one thing at a time.

Only one thing well at a time.

Yes, you can you can try to remember
two things or three things.

You're capable of doing it,

but your productivity, your performance,
is going to start to go down.

So let's do one more,
another attention test,

just in case you missed the bear,
try doing this one.

Just listen to this nice video again.

It's actually a commercial
advertisement for a car,

but I think it makes good use
of psychology and cognitive science.

So I'll let it speak for itself.

I don't receive any endorsements
from this company.

But here we go.

Video: To test
just how much attention

the attention-stealing design
of the new Skoda Fabia actually steals,

we left one parked on this
ordinary road in West London.

We wanted to see if its sharp,
crystalline shapes, bold lines

and lower, wider profile would attract
the desired level of attention.

Will the 17-inch black alloy wheels
stop passersby in their tracks?

Will the angular headlights
attract the attention of other road users?

Will a crowd gather to check out
its fresh, sporty look?

Well not quite.

But did the attention-stealing design
distract you from noticing

that the entire street has been changing
right before your very eyes?

Don't believe us? Have another look.

Did you spot the van changing to a taxi?

How about the scooter
changing to a pair of bicycles?

Or the lady holding a pig?

Let alone the fact that the entire street
is now completely different.

Didn't think so?

Marvin Chun: So hopefully
I've made the point

that your brain can really only attend to,
focus on, do well,

one thing at a time, one object at a time,
one task at a time.

And so with that background

I'm now going to share three tips
on how to improve your focus and attention

given these limitations.

Tip number one is to try to simplify
what you attend to. Okay?

And I'll explain that more in a moment,

because first we have
to try to understand:

Why is it the case that the brain
can only attend to one thing at a time?

I would like for you
to think of your brain as an orchestra.

Okay? It's like an orchestra.

When you listen to an orchestra

you don't just focus on one instrument
or one player,

you listen to the whole harmony
of all the different instruments

coming in and out.

Beautiful music comes from this synchrony
and harmony and coordination

of all the different instrument pieces.

And that's exactly
how the brain works as well.

And right now, again, in my laboratory

we're working on ways
to measure this harmony,

and to quantify this harmony using
something called functional connectivity.

And we can build models of how well
people attend based on this harmony

such that what you have here
on this graph over here on the X-axis

is a prediction of who's more attentive
and who's less attentive.

And what we have on the Y-axis

is the actual individuals
that we're predicting.

And you can see that
our models do a good job.

If you listen to the entire brain,

you can predict who's
going to be more attentive

and who's going to be less attentive.

In fact, these graphs
allow us to even predict

symptoms for attentional
deficit disorders.

So clearly people differ. Okay?

I told you that you're all limited
to only attend to one thing.

But still, different people, some people,

are more focused than other people.

The people on the top right
are more focused,

and can hold their attention
for a longer time,

than people on the bottom left.

So what is different
about all of your brains,

and how can we help you have
a kind of brain that's on the top right,

that allows you to maintain focus?

So my three tips as I mentioned.

My first tip is: simplify.

I told you that there is
too much information in the environment,

then control how much information
that you have to pay attention to.

If you are a company trying to
sell a product, or to teach something,

or to introduce something
to another person,

simplify your message.

Likewise, as a consumer,
simplify what you see.

My favorite example is
this legendary introduction of the iPhone

by the past Steve Jobs.

The phone design speaks for itself.

He puts the price up.

He puts up the size of the memory,
and just leaves it to the bare essentials,

so that people can focus
on the important information.

If he were an amateur presenter,

he might have presented a slide like this:

Introducing the new iPhone.
Revolutionary design.

And this is how some people
make their slides.

It's how some companies
sell their products.

But really you have to simplify,

because consumers, all of us,

we don't have the capacity
to process so much information.

Tip number two is to relax.
It's so important.

This is a very famous,
old principle in psychology

called the Yerkes-Dodson curve.

And what we have here
on the X-axis is arousal. Okay?

Or stress, or emotion, or focus,

it's all of that on the bottom axis,
from low to high.

Of course, what we care about
is the Y-axis, performance, okay?

We want to be high, show high performance.

Some people act as if the more pumped-up
they are, and the harder they try,

their performance is always
going to go up. Okay?

The more stressed you get,
performance will go up.

Some people think that.

But, of course, research indicates
that that's not the case.

The curve is actually
an upside-down U-shaped function.

So that optimal performance -
yes, you need some arousal,

you need to put some effort into any task,

and then you hit your peak performance.

But if you put too much effort in,
or you are over aroused,

then your performance is going
to drop over on the far right

So that's a very important principle
in attention research.

So how do you relax?

Of course, that's a whole other TED talk,
on how to relax.

I'm just going to share
two quick sub tips for that.

One is to don't forget to breathe,
as basic as that sounds.

But if you're feeling stressed
or even if you're not feeling stressed,

it's really good to breathe.

So let's try it once here.

We're going to take a deep breath in
for about 5 to 10 seconds.

Just breathe in,

make the air come all the way down
to the bottom of your lungs

and then exhale very slowly.

Okay. Very good.

Can't you feel the clarity
in your brain happening when you do that?

It makes two points.

When you engage in deep breathing,
it will actually help you relax.

And another point is that
in order to breathe deeply

you actually have to relax.

No one's going to do this deep breath

while they're jumping up and down
or doing some kind of weird exercise.

And so that's, I think, one very simple
and free tip you can have

to try to help relaxing.

Meditation, prayer, yoga,

there are many other ways
to relax as well.

The second thing I'll share
on the topic of relaxation

is maybe a surprising one,
or maybe it's not.

But exercise is really great.

And taking walks is huge.

There's actually a ton of research

showing that taking a walk is
very beneficial, not only for your mood,

but also for your attention,
for your cognitive skills.

And importantly, it's important
to take a walk in a park

or a place where there are trees,

where there's greenery,
where there's a green environment.

So, if you take two groups

- and this is work done by Berman and
Jonides at the University of Michigan -

if you take two groups,

compare walking in a city versus walking
in a park or walking in a forest,

people who walk in a forest
are not only more relaxed and happier,

but they actually show
improved attention and focus

after they return from their walk.

So just a little plug
for taking a walk after lunch.

My final tip is unitasking,

and this is probably the most
important tip I want to share with you

because I think
there's a ton of research

that is counterintuitive to people.

People think: "In order to be productive,
I need to multitask.

I need to do more things
at any given time."

But that's actually opposite
to everything I just told you

about how the brain works.

Your brain works better
when it's unitasking,

when it's only doing
one thing at a time. Okay?

How many of you check your phones
when you're studying,

or when you're doing something important

like writing a report
or making an important plan?

How many of you check your phones
when you do that?

Let's be honest.

Everyone checks their phones right?

How many of you check your phones
more than one or two times an hour?

Yes, all of your hands are still up. Okay?

Psychology and neuroscience
research suggests

that that's not
a very efficient way to work.

So let's try this out.

I think this is
an important demonstration.

I'm going to show
a list of numbers on the left.

If the number is blue, add seven;
if the number is pink, subtract seven.

Then move on to the next number.

You're going down the list
as fast as you can.

Add seven if it's blue,
and just subtract seven if it's red,

and move on to the next number.

When you're done just clap your hands
so I know when people are finished.

Okay? It's clear instructions.
Add seven or subtract seven.

Here we go. One, two, three.

Do it as fast as you can.

Okay. I am hearing some claps.

When you're done clap your hands quickly.

Okay. Great.
So, you're pretty much done.

Let's just do it one more time.

Now the list on the on the right.

Here we go.

If it's blue add seven;
if it's pink subtract seven.

As fast as you can.

And then you can clap
at the end of the list.

Okay. So what do you think?

Much harder isn't it? It's much harder.

But you probably also noticed

that these two lists are the same.

The same number of addition problems,
the same number of subtraction problems.

But on the left you're unitasking,

doing a bunch of addition and then
only switching once to do subtraction.

On the right you're multitasking. Okay?

So when you're studying or working
while checking your phone,

you're doing stuff on the right,

you're making your job
harder for yourself.

And if you'd like to test this
in the laboratory,

on the right you're going to be 30% slower
and going to be 30% less accurate,

and your brain has to work harder.

It's like exercising wearing
a big heavy backpack.

Why would you handicap yourself

if you can unitask
like we showed you here on the left?

Okay? So that's my final tip.

It's to try to unitask
to improve your focus and productivity.

It's okay to check your phone;

just do it after you've finished working
for 30 minutes or an hour as a reward.

Don't check it every five minutes.

Don't check your emails
every five minutes,

don't check your Facebook
every five minutes.

So in conclusion, my three tips
for improving focus and attention are:

simplify, relax, unitask.

I guarantee that the research indicates
that your productivity will go up

if you follow these tips,

and it may even make you smarter.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)