Brain knows when to really pay attention

Spot a bear in the woods, and a different part of your brain will yell “pay attention” than if you were studying bears at the zoo.

New research shows it takes one part of the brain to start concentrating and another to be distracted. This discovery could help scientists develop better treatments for attention deficit disorder.

“This ability to willfully focus your attention is physically separate in the brain from distracting things grabbing your attention,” said Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He led the study, published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science. “Now we know these two things are separate, it raises the possibility that we can fix them independently,” Miller said.

Read full story in MSNBC. Thanks to Steven Lehar.