What is focus?

[Mr. Potato Head]

A few times in my life I have done weird things while tired or preoccupied. What is the chemical or mechanical reason for these things?

 

For instance, I have a couple times, early in the morning and very tired poured a bowl of cereal and milk and placed the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the refrigerator.

 

Or when I arrived home and unpacked from a business trip placed my deoderant in the shower and my soap in the cabinet.

 

What causes this lack of focus or "straight thinking" on a chemical or even synaptic level? How does more sleep create a more precise attention level/span/potential, etc.?

[Tormod]

I fail to see why there must be a *reason* for these things. They are merely examples which show that we are not perfect... :)

[Queso]

:)

[Mr. Potato Head]

  Tormod said:

I fail to see why there must be a *reason* for these things. They are merely examples which show that we are not perfect... ;)

 

So, you don't know? ;) :)

[Turtle]

___Rather than to say there is a reason, or cause, there is certainly a "state" of chemical/synaptic "condition" to our brain activity. This or that region active or not, chemicals in this or that state of dilution etc. It would be interesting to just wear one of those multi-sensor caps for an extended period & examine the states during different activities as some graph forms or another.

___Most studies I've seen using this setup have a relatively short data collection period conducted in a rather controlled environment. Collecting data 24/7 under everyday circumstance certainly has the potential to reveal some insights into this question. Speaking of bandwidth... :)

[Tormod]

  Mr. Potato Head said:

So, you don't know? ;) :)

 

I guess so. But my position would be that there is no natural reason other than a system overload, which I think is a natural necessity in all living organisms. There cannot be perfection in a living system because failure is what makes an organism learn. ;)

[Turtle]

___Ahhhh.... But does the Potato Head learn from this in the manner you seem to suggest? That is to say does the experience allow him to prevent the occurence in the future? Moreover, is it even right to assume this experience is some form of failure? Sooner or later someone will interject fight or flight as a root "cause" & there's no end of that approach.

___Then there is the whole dream/sleep business;no end of that either.

___I don't disagree with your position Tormod; I totally agree s*** (stuf) just happens. I just want to wear the little hat; I love hats. :)

[Tormod]

  Turtle said:

___Ahhhh.... But does the Potato Head learn from this in the manner you seem to suggest? That is to say does the experience allow him to prevent the occurence in the future?

 

Now that would depend on Mr Potato Head's ability to accept his own mistakes and learn not to handle hot coffee in the morning, no? ;)

 

  Quote

Moreover, is it even right to assume this experience is some form of failure? Sooner or later someone will interject fight or flight as a root "cause" & there's no end of that approach.

 

I frankly don't know. I am just guessing. Mr P. Head asked for a mechanical reason and I say there isn't one. I have no clue, really. I am however one of those people who look for their pants while wearing them so I have, er, let's call it some experience in the field.

 

  Quote

I just want to wear the little hat; I love hats. :)

 

Hats are cool. The sweat band on my fishing (and walking, running etc) cap is getting nasty and needs a wash. It is a hand wash only item and as such tends to not be cleaned more than once every decade. I've only owned it for one year so I've got about 9 to go before I clean it.

 

The point of which is that I *know* that any attempt at cleaning it will ruin it because I'll use bleach instead of washing powder, or whatever. ;)

[Turtle]

  Tormod said:

The sweat band on my fishing (and walking, running etc) cap is getting nasty and needs a wash. It is a hand wash only item and as such tends to not be cleaned more than once every decade. I've only owned it for one year so I've got about 9 to go before I clean it.

 

The point of which is that I *know* that any attempt at cleaning it will ruin it because I'll use bleach instead of washing powder, or whatever. ;)

Me too; I hate that! I currently have 8 hats, but I only made 2 of them. My favorite felt fedora is in much the same condition as your fishing hat, but it is at the 1`1 year mark. When I moved I stuuffed it in a sack & it now is not only sweat stained but malformed. I don't know about Oslo, but I can't find anyone in the Portland metro area that blocks (reshapes) & cleans felt hats.

___Clearly one simply needs many hats. Or not. I haven't ever drank ale from a hat, but if I did it would take focus. :)

[Mr. Potato Head]

Ok I can also put it another way. Race car drivers have a term called brain fade. That in which the driver for a reason unknown to him(her) brakes too late for a given corner and runs wide into the runoff area. After repeating 100 laps of braking and accelerating at the same points, suddenly one is missed. I feel inclined to submit the argument that this has nothing to do with learning. Certainly, I have packed and unpacked from trips many times and I also eat breakfast in the same fashion each morning. :)

[Tormod]

  Mr. Potato Head said:

Race car drivers have a term called brain fade.

 

Okay, see, there is even a term for it. I just call it brain fry. ;)

 

  Quote

After repeating 100 laps of braking and accelerating at the same points, suddenly one is missed. I feel inclined to submit the argument that this has nothing to do with learning.

 

Sure. But to be perfectly honest it does suggest (to me) exactly what I said before; we are not perfect. That also implies that race car drivers can increase the amount of laps they do between misses through training, which is a form of learning, obviously (and of course a bit of talent, whatever that is). A newbie would tend to get more misses. It's all about training. But practice does *not* make perfect, it only makes better.

 

  Quote

Certainly, I have packed and unpacked from trips many times and I also eat breakfast in the same fashion each morning. B)

 

I tend to eat breakfast differently each morning, and that is the truth! I am too disorganized to have any control over it. :)

[Turtle]

___Neither do I think it has to do with learning (picture me wearing whatever hat you think implies seriousness). These occurances procede from initial conditions with so many variables - or parameters if you wish - that the time required to establish any mechanism as you suggest far excedes the time available to do so for any individual we know of.

___We as humans seem to naturally organize things through repeated experience & the missed curve by the race driver is attention drawing because of its seeming contradiction to our perceived organizational contructs. The construct is never complete however, & therefore never accurate - "true" if you wish.

___Again - & at the risk of violating policy - **** happens. Some of it is interesting to us, some of it not. This **** is interesting to me; thanks for contributing.

[Tormod]

  Turtle said:

___Again - & at the risk of violating policy - **** happens. Some of it is interesting to us, some of it not. This **** is interesting to me; thanks for contributing.

 

If anyone is not too well known for violating our policies I'd say you are the One, T.

 

I agree, it is interesting. We see patterns everywhere. A lot of it is nonsense, but there is a beauty in patterns that tricks us.

 

But we must be careful with counting recurring events, because as Mark Twain said, there are three kinds of lies: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".

 

(Going to bed now). B)

[Turtle]

___Ohhhh I love Mark! If I had just 10^(-1) +10^(-2)+10^(-3)+10^(-4)+10^(-5)+10^(-6)+10^(-7)... of his wit, I still would be considerably less than a half wit.

[CraigD]

  Mr. Potato Head said:

A few times in my life I have done weird things while tired or preoccupied. What is the chemical or mechanical reason for these things? … What causes this lack of focus or "straight thinking" on a chemical or even synaptic level?

I think previous posters to this thread have been approaching the question philosophically, along the lines of “why do we err?”. I’ll take the question at face value, and address the neurology of sleepiness, fatigue, tiredness – whatever you want to call the mental state wherein otherwise sane people begin doing weird things.

 

Loss of attention, or focus, can have a purely cognitive cause – i.e: you’re distracted by something else – or a neurological one – you’re sleepy, fatigued, etc.

 

Focusing on the latter, the major brain center involved appears to be the hypothalamus and the surrounding retricular formation, a major neurochemical, dopamine.

 

There also appears to be a more subtle cause related to the depletion of synaptic neurochemical involved in the uptake of neurotransmitters such as serotonin. Ingestible chemicals like caffeine, cocaine, and amphetamine provide a quick, imperfect replacement for these, providing an artificial means of restoring mental focus.

  Quote

How does more sleep create a more precise attention level/span/potential, etc.?

On one hand, the hypothalamus has a structure – the suprachiasmatic nucleus – that functions almost exactly like a mechanical timer, telling the hypothalamus and surrounding formations to stop with the dopamine, etc. On the other, less obvious hand, the depleted neurochemicals get replenished.

 

My non-neurologist’s understanding falls well short of what I’d call “knowing” the cause of loss of attention. My read of the literature leads me to believe that even specialists’ understandings are far from exact. But a wealth of experimental data and sensible speculation exists.

[EWright]

:eek: Focus is 18 hours at a poker table with no mistakes or lapse in judgement. :eek: OK, :rant: may there is no such thing as focus. :circle:

[Qfwfq]

One of the many amusing things that have repeatedly happened to me was, when getting into bed after having switched the light off, groping around the wall for the switch until I realized the difficulty in finding it was due to the fact that I had already switched it off. Once I was even beginning to think "Geez, I'll never find it in this darkness, how can I get the light turned out?"