Lost & Found

Reported February 2008

IRVINE, Calif. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Are you always losing things? Your purse? The remote? You're not alone. But now, scientists may have found the key to finding your lost keys … and more!

Finding those lost keys could get a little easier if you understand how your brain searches for things. Cognitive scientists used FMRI to watch people's brains while they tracked the movement of these dots. The researchers discovered -- certain parts of your brain light up!

"Simply by thinking about a particular feature, you can make your brain reconfigure to become more sensitive to it," John Serences, Ph.D., assistant professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California, Irvine, told Ivanhoe.

It works for finding people, too. "If you're looking for your friend in a crowd and you know that they're wearing a red jacket, then red things tend to jump out at you," Dr. Serences said.

This discovery won't just help you find things. Dr. Serences says knowing what parts of the brain activate when you're concentrating on something could help doctors diagnose attention deficit disorder, or ADD.

"This would be a significant advance because currently, most diagnoses of things like ADD are done on a largely subjective scale." Dr. Serences said.

And earlier and more accurate diagnoses could mean more effective treatment.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

John Serences
Irvine, CA
(949) 824-8578
john.serences@uci.edu

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