The aging brain is more susceptible to distractions, but new research says it's possible to diminish distractibility by learning to single out a sound amidst distracting stimuli.
The researchers, from the University of California in San Francisco, also outline that their findings could be applied to techniques for working with children with attention deficit disorder.
"We show that by learning to discriminate amidst progressively more challenging distractions, we can diminish distractibility in rat and human brains," says lead author Dr. Jyoti Mishra.
Deploying a range of sounds at various frequencies, the research team asked participants to focus on pre-determined target frequencies.
After learning to recognize the target tone by means of reinforcement feedback, they were later asked to identify it amidst other frequencies that progressively became more challenging due to their ability to mask the target one.
Experimentation was structured so that distractor frequencies became more challenging when participants correctly identified target tones and less challenging as participants made errors.
The targets, by contrast, remained unchanged.
Experimentation was conducted on both rats and humans and in both sets it showed that the exercise not only improved concentration but memory and attention span as well.
Electrophysiological brain recordings further supported this finding, showing a diminishment in neural responses to distractions.
The study, published in the journal Neuron, indicates that even in older age the brain can benefit from such training strategies.