Attention Can Be Measured by Neck Movements, Says Study

According to a recent press release from EurekAlert, in a new study focused on covert attention, researchers have determined that a device that monitors neck movements can be used to accurately measure the amount of attentiveness given in humans to a certain focal point.

Humans generally focus attention on a person or object by focusing their eyes on the person's face or the object. However, this may be a false indicator that someone is paying attention to something. A fixed gaze can be misleading, as researchers have discovered that attention can be shifted from an object that a person is fixated on without moving the eye focus.

It is possible for someone to look another directly in the face while "listening" to the other talk, but all the while be focusing his attention elsewhere, like a daydream, without moving the eyes. This is called covert attention.

Dr. Brian Corneil at the Centre for Brain and Mind at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada has discovered a way to measure covert attention by measuring the movements of the neck. His study, "Neuromuscular consequences of reflexive covert orienting", is located at the Advance Online Publication of "Nature Neuroscience". Corneil is an assistant professor in physiology & pharmacology as well as in psychology.

Dr. Corneil says "Our results demonstrate for the first time that covert attention can be measured in real-time via recordings of muscle activity in the neck. This finding may fundamentally change how attention is measured, grounding it in an objective and straightforward technique".

Before Corneil's discovery, attention was measured much differently. It has previously been based on measuring indirect changes in reaction timing or on the detection of stimulation.

In what is changing the perspective on how we look at the measurement of attention, Dr. Oneil has uncovered that the muscles of the neck are used during covert orienting, even when eye movements are not present. This discovery is imperative in that it could help pave the way for assessing therapeutic effectiveness in neurodegenerative disorders, such as strokes and Parkinson's disease.

This research study was conducted by researchers at Queen's University, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Toronto.The funds for this research were provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Human Frontier Science Program.

Sources:
EurekAlert Press Release:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uowo-ara113007.php

University Of Western Ontario:
http://www.uwo.ca/