How many times has this happened to you?
You’re on the cusp of saying something important and are interrupted by an urgent text message. But when you return to your conversation, you’re at a loss for words. Literally. The important thing you were about to say has vanished from your mind, leaving you wondering just what the heck was so important.
Publishing in Nature Communications, U.S. and U.K. researchers have delved deeper into this derailment of thought, and believe the brain system involved in this disruption of cognition may also play a part in interrupting or stopping bodily movements.
The University of California, San Diego and Oxford University researchers focused on the subthalamic nucleus (STN), which is a component of the brain’s stopping system. Positioned in the midbrain and part of the basal ganglia system, the STN is a lens-shaped cluster of tightly packed neurons.
From earlier research, the researchers knew the STN was utilized during stopping actions. According to University of California, San Diego neuroscientist Adam Aron, the STN may be particularly important for broad stops, the whole-body jolt that occurs during an unexpected event.
In their study, the researchers analyzed signals from the scalp in 20 healthy subjects, and signals from electrode implants from seven people with Parkinson’s disease.
The STN is often a target for deep brain stimulation for people with Parkinson’s, a disease that can cause tremors, and slowed-down movement and facial expression. According to the researchers, the STN, in people with Parkinson’s, may be working conversely and keeping them over-focused on actions.
The experimental test involved participants memorizing a string of letters. Before the recall test, a tone was played. However, during some trials, the researchers replaced the tone with an unexpected birdsong, which had the potential to delineate thought.
Looking at the recorded brain activity, the researchers found that unexpected events and body stopping have the same brain signature. If the STN was engaged heavily, the participants’ ability to recall the letters was more affected.
“An unexpected event appears to clear out what you were thinking,” said Aron in a statement. “The radically new idea is that just as the brain’s stopping mechanism is involved in stopping what we’re doing with our bodies it might also be responsible for interrupting and flushing out our thoughts.”
Now that a correlation has been established, the researchers said future investigations might probe into whether the STN is related to increased distractibility in conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
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