What do Bela Fleck and the Flecktones have to do with attention skills? Or music and divided attention.

Knowing how I like many kinds of music, friends encouraged me to see Be’la Fleck and the Flecktones. I love exposing my daughter Sally to new musical genres. Besides, I always preach that new and novel is good for the brain.  Now was the chance to practice that advice!

At the concert, what we really found interesting was that two of the musicians were able to play two instruments simultaneously, or change instruments very quickly and continue playing. Howard Levy played piano and harmonica at the same time. Futureman, the rhythm section, played both a string instrument of his own creation and the drums in rapid succession or simultaneously.

We talked about what it took to do this. Both musicians are stellar examples of managing divided attention.  They were able to retrieve and attend to one set of stimuli, rapidly transition to another set, then shift back again. They had great processing speed to make these rapid transitions occur.

Often when a person does two things simultaneously, one activity has become automatic and most of the person’s focus is on the task that’s less automatic. An "automatic" task is less demanding on the brain and actually uses less brain real estate. It’s easier for this to happen if the tasks are somewhat different. Many of us are able to stir or chop something in the kitchen while we talk on the telephone.

Tasks become automatic through mental and physical practice. By practicing, we develop memory traces which help us remember how to do the task next time. Paying attention is also important for coordinating and timing multiple tasks.

What are the ramifications for you? For real learning, it’s always best to work on accuracy before improving speed. You want to do the task well before you try to do it faster. Research also shows we should avoid doing two tasks at once if we’d do them better one at a time. Many studies on multitasking from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Dana Organization, and others find that multitasking results in less accuracy and a slower speed of accomplishment overall.

Still, sometimes multitasking can’t be avoided. By improving your ability to handle divided attention, you can enhance your learning in this multimedia and high-stimuli world. At The Brain Trainer, we help clients improve their ability to manage divided attention, boost their processing speed, and allow skills to become automatic. If you’re quickly able to shift attention, you can take in better information more rapidly. And the better the input, the stronger your output becomes.

Kaiser Family Foundation, Program for the Study of Media and Health. "Media Multitasking Among American Youth: Prevalence, Predictors and Pairings." Released Dec. 12, 2006. 

http://kff.org/entmedia/7592.cfm (Accessed Aug. 15, 2008)

Patoine, B. (2008) Brain Development In a Hyper-Tech World. Dana Organization

Continuing to Push Your Skills with Mild Cognitive Impairment

There’s a difference between early onset dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) Dementia is defined by two or more areas of cognitive decline. Early dementia happens before the age of 60.

When an individual has mild cognitive impairment, he has only one symptom of dementia – memory difficulties. Individual with mild cognitive impairment are capable of functional activities such as work, social skills, and skill such as driving and maintaining the home.  They can reason and have good judgment. 

Only 10 to 12 percent of individuals with MCI will progress to dementia. If you notice these changes in yourself or a family member, it is best to see a dementia team headed by a knowledgeable physician. The team working together is best able to conduct a comprehensive assessment and intervention. Early intervention results in the best quality of life for the longest time.

The role of the speech language pathologist on the team is to more deeply assess cognitive and communication skills such as attention, short term/working memory, long term memory, logic and reasoning, sentence structure, comprehension, reading and writing, and naming objects and people.

Language skills, memory, and logic and reasoning are three keys to keeping the mind strong for anyone.  Here are some simple things you can do to help keep these areas thriving:

Language skills can be developed.  Play with anagrams. Start with a multi-syllabic word or short phrase and move around the letters to make as many new words as you can. The more often you try it, the quicker you will be able to do this task.

Strategies that may help are to write down what comes to mind first. Then use each vowel to think of new words. Then take the consonants in order.  Remember to use blends as well follow each blend by one of the available vowels.

Here’s an example of words we can find in "The Brain Trainer":
Rain, it, art, then,
Ran, brat, that, than,
I, ban, near, net,
Bran, tree, neat, an,
Train, rat, rate, he,
Ain’t, their, there,
Near, ear, tear, tea,
In, brine, rib, three,
At, ant, inn, hair,
Air, rare, bear, bare,
Tire, bath, bathe,
Rant, inner, tribe,
Thin, thinner, thee

Notice that since there is only one “H” in “The Brain Trainer,” you can use “H” only once in any words you think of with the given letters.  There are two “N’s” so you can use “N” twice.

Memory skills should be worked on daily. One quick fun way to do this is to draw things from memory. Can you draw the floor plan of your house, your friend’s house, your kid’s house, your local mall, your church or place of worship, and your backyard or street?

Logic and reasoning skills work on mental flexibility and problem-solving. Look around the room you are in and focus on one thing, such as a chair. Write down as many ways as you can to use that chair. Look at the categories you used – this will often help you think of a few more things. Some examples: sit on, use as a stepping stool, make a fort with, use to put your feet up, hold the door open, hold paper down with, keep the door knob jammed closed.

Have fun and experiment with different activities to keep you mind active.

Note: Dr Parker is a part of the comprehensive dementia team at The Neurological Institute, headed by neurologist Hemanth Rao, M.D.