#338： How to Beat Distraction and Stay Focused
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we discuss the science of distraction and focus with neuroscientist Dr. Adam Gazali. Dr. Gazali is the founder of the Geleneys Labs at the University of California, San Francisco, where he and his team have researched what goes on in our brains when we use our digital devices, why they distract us and what we can do about it.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well if you're
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like me you have a love hate relationship with your digital devices on the one hand they give
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us access to unlimited amounts of information connect us with friends and family and allow
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us to work from pretty much anywhere on the other hand they can captivate our attention so much that
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we feel distracted and angsty and try as we might we often find it hard to ignore the itch to stop
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scrolling through instagram and really listen to what our loved one is saying why do these devices
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feel so dang sometimes even addictive my guest today is a neuroscientist who studied that question
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in depth his name is adam gazeli and he's the founder of the gazeli labs at university of
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california at san francisco there he and his team has researched what goes on in our brains when we
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use our digital devices why they distract us and what we can do about it today on the show adam and
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i discuss the science of distraction and focus he walks us through first the cognitive functions
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that we use to focus our attention and to avoid distraction he then explains why these evolved
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cognitive functions are mismatched for today's constantly buzzing digital devices and he does
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this by using a theory of optimal food foraging borrowed from biology it's really interesting we
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then discuss action steps grounded in science on how you can be distraction and stay more focused
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throughout the day we end our conversation talking about adam's work creating prescription
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video games yes prescription that can be used to help elderly patients and individuals with adhd
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really fascinating show after the show's over check out the show notes at awim.is slash distracted
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adam gazali welcome to the show thank you glad to be here so you wrote a book about it's called the
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distracted mind and it's i think it's something that more and more people that are just becoming
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frustrated with themselves because they're constantly checking their phones they feel
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like they're not present with their kids they feel like they're not getting as much done at work because
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they're checking all those pings and whatever how did you get into research and you're a neuroscientist
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how did you get into researching how our brain reacts to all this technology and why it distracts us
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sure well i actually came in through an unusual route so i've been studying the aging brain for almost 25 years
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now and my research uh over the last decade uh i guess starting around a decade ago became focused on
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understanding how we change in terms of our thinking as we age especially our attention
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our ability to remember things and our perception of the world around us and what i found in my research
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was that older adults who are experiencing these senior moments which are essentially memory lapses
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were doing so because they were more distractible so in experiments that we performed in an fmri
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environment so in an mri scanner recording functional brain activity what we showed was that they were
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focusing as well as a 20 year old on relevant information that we were presenting them but the irrelevant
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information which they knew was irrelevant so we consider that a distraction they were over processing
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it they were not filtering it and the degree by which they took in that irrelevant information
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was associated with a decline in their memory for the information they were trying to remember
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so essentially they were having a filtering problem and they were having a distracted mind what happened
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after that was that i quickly expanded our work to look at people of all ages and found that we're all
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distractible in many ways and i would say that this research which was the basic science of attention
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was colliding with phenomena in the tech world and i moved from the east coast where i did all of my
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medical training and scientific training in neuroscience to berkeley and san francisco and so i'm sitting
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right here in the tech hub of the world and see the influence of technology and feel it in myself and so
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those two worlds collided my my research on attention and distraction which eventually evolved into
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multitasking itself and just my observations about technology and its impact on okay this is really
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interesting we'll get into that idea how older as we get older we we have a harder time filtering
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just kind of counterintuitive you think that by the time you're 50 or 60 you you wouldn't have like a
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racing mind and you'd have a little bit more focus but we'll get we'll talk about why that is here in a bit
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but let's talk about the the science of distraction you know what goes on in our brain when we get
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distracted you argue that distraction at its core is goal interference how would you describe goal
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interference to a layman well first this is a concept of interference which uh occurs all the time
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it's essentially noise that degrades the signal that we're trying to detect you you hear it in you know
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the old days when you had radio stations that you would tune in and you would move until you hit the
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signal and then you'd slide out and you know there would be more noise and that noise exists in
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in everything in nature and physics we also have this noise this interference when we come up with a goal
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so we we formulate a goal uh we set that and that involves a whole set of abilities and then we have to
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enact that goal and anything that impedes that ability we consider goal interference so distractions are
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one type of interference another type we actually define differently which would be multitasking
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so just to break that down a bit distraction in our laboratory in our work is irrelevant information
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that you know is irrelevant and that you are actively trying to ignore so the classic example is you're having
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a conversation at a restaurant it's loud you're really trying to focus on your friend's voice and hear what
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they're saying and you're trying to suppress all that chat around you that is interference in your
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goal of focusing the other type of interference multitasking is when you make the decision to engage
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in more than one task or goal at a time so now you're at the restaurant you're listening to your friend
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but you're also trying to hear the waiter you know recount the the specials uh that evening at the next table
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since you missed it the first time at your table so now you have two goals and that's another form of
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interference actually more disruptive form of interference but both of them degrade your
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ability to accomplish your and you also talk about internal interferences as well right so i i just gave
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two examples of external interference the noise in the restaurant which you could decide to attend to
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or decide to ignore but all of this distraction and multitasking can occur without any stimuli from the
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outside world it can occur within your own mind so likewise you know as i just described for
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external for internal a distraction would be something that arises to your mind your goals
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to ignore it let's say you just had a fight with your significant other earlier that morning now
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you're in a big meeting with your boss you know you have to be giving your complete attention here
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but your mind involuntarily returns is not filtering out that that earlier event multitasking internally is
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when you're having that conversation with your boss but you're also thinking about what you're going to have
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dinner that night and so you make that as a choice so it's really about the decision about how you
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interact with information in your environment or internal information one of the big arguments of
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your book is that i think the book is called the ancient brains in like modern world or something like
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that but like there's this disconnect so we have this ability to set goals which is it's highly evolved
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right um not a lot of other animals can do that um but we have these what you call cognitive control
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abilities that aren't as evolved and causes us to be distracted from that goal we set from ourselves
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so let's talk about what are these cognitive control abilities and and then later on like why
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aren't they as evolved as our goal setting abilities yeah let me let me break that down a bit i think
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that's sort of you know in my mind one of the main thesis of the book um that sometimes gets missed so i'm
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glad that we're gonna dissect it so just just your first point before i dive into cognitive control
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about goal setting abilities i i in my mind that is the pinnacle of the human brain um the the peak of
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our evolution of our abilities is goal setting and it's not that other animals aren't are devoid of any
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goal setting but the type of goal setting that we have these long time delayed goals you could set a
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goal for 10 years in the future and your goals could be interwoven with other goals and interwoven with
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other people's goals that is unique that that is a human ability that really i i would say allowed
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us to create all the things that you know sort of define us our civilization our culture our language
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technology art was really due to this ability to set goals of that level but as you described
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setting goals is one half of of the puzzle right you also have to be able to enact your goals and there's
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a set of abilities that that i categorize in three separate groups although they are overlapping and
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i'll i'll explain that more that's actually a key point and we call them cognitive control so how you
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control your interactions with the environment based on your goals how do you enact them and they would be
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three different categories attention working memory we define as goal management and these are the skills
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that allow you to carry out those high level goals to varying degrees of success and then the um
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there was a so there's so it's attention working memory goal management okay well let's talk about
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attention um i think people think they know what attention is and i think usually the way they define
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it is i'm focused on just this one thing i'm paying attention to this one thing but as you mentioned
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earlier an important part of attention is ignoring things that you don't want to pay attention that
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actually requires work so what goes on in our brain when we're trying to pay attention while
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simultaneously trying to ignore not pertinent information yeah you know attention is is
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complicated being a cognitive neuroscientist as a term because it is used so commonly and you know
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famous quotes from psychologists have described that you know everyone essentially feels like they know
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what attention is because it's you know it's part of our vernacular and it's so critical to
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everything we do but it's actually an immensely complex concept and and very complex from a
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neural mechanism point of view as well i would define it as our ability to direct our limited mental
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resources where we want them in space and in time but this also involves as as we just discussed and
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you you alluded to not just focus but another active process which is suppression and the ignoring of
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irrelevant information since we have limited resources we must direct them where where we want
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them sometimes they're directed by the environment that's another discussion we call that bottom up
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attention when the environment demands its focus from you because something is very salient or novel
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but what we're talking about now is goal directed attention when you look at brain networks and we've done
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this for many years with functional imaging both eg and mri you see that there are really two different
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networks involved in this process of focus and ignoring and that they're both critical for performance
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so that was you know it's uh it's it's not accurate to think that focusing is what we do and ignoring comes
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for free it's not passive it actually requires resources and a different network that we see in the brain and
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when you fail to ignore you suffer the consequences which is interference so that's that's a little bit
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about attention you know we also know that it's not just the direction of your focus and the ignoring of
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the irrelevant but also this is the ability to sustain it over time which is i think a real issue
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currently so that's just a little bit of the complexities of of that concept of attention so what
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hinders our ability to pay attention i mean you mentioned earlier that as we get older we have a harder time
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ignoring things like what's going on there what's degrading or what changes in our brain or what
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yeah so you know one of one of the things uh i just mentioned that there are two mean
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there's many ways of classifying attention one way of of splitting it in half is to say top down and bottom up
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attention top down attention is what we were just talking about goal directed attention you're putting
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your focus where you want it based on your goals the other type of attention is bottom up attention
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it's when the environment demands it so this was a critical for our survival it's actually how attention
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developed in the first place it's the more evolutionary ancient form of attention so seeking out food
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avoiding predators seeking out mates these were the things that allowed us to survive and the environment
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drove these interactions largely reflexively so something dangerous presents itself you pay attention
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to it if you're an animal and even even a human we still retain these bottom up abilities and then you
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instinctively flee and and that leads to your survival and you pass along those abilities bottom up
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attention is is still a part of our lives and we would need it to survive if you're crossing a street
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and you're lost in top down attention even internally thinking about your day you have to be
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responsive to a car horn letting you know that you're about to be you know crushed so we retain bottom
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up attention and one of the roles that take one of the areas where technology has challenged us in my mind
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is the amount of bottom up information that's very salient so their beeps their flashes their buzzes
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across all of our sensory stimulation and they are there as notifications to push and to pull our attention
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so i i think that this is shifting the balance between top down and bottom up how we're you know being
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notified by our devices when they have an information packet for us so that's that's one way that i think
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attention is shifting right now now in the aging literature and what's happening with the older brain
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it may not be because of that and actually we have evidence that it's not only at least caused by changes
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in technology but just changes in the brain as it ages because we see a lot of the at least we're
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starting to find that the things that we have shown in the laboratory in the older human brain we see an
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older monkey brains as well and as far as i know they're not on social media a lot more and texting more
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so i think that it's really also just about the aging process and what occurs is that the neural network
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that's engaged when irrelevant information is presented is is not as robustly activated and that in that
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that stimuli around you that should be suppressed below what we consider you know just a flat baseline
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is getting through and it's being over processed and then it degrades the quality of the information
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that's relevant or your goals that are depressing well maybe we can talk about besides um you know
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researching how technology makes us more distracted you also talk about your research on how technology
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can help us focus more maybe we talk about there's some of the things we can do to counteract
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our aging brain and its ability to pay attention yeah that was a great pivot and that was like basically my
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life pivot i would say so what happened in my career is that what i just told you where you said
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that's kind of depressing i was out in the world uh giving lectures in the mid-2000s maybe like let's
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say 2005 2006 and especially speaking to the public older adults about the distracted mind and the change
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and attention and filtering and also the degradation that old adults experience even more so when they
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multitask and i started realizing that that conversation while interesting for an academic audience who was
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very curious about how we you know solve that problem with fmri and all of the details of neural networks
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to an audience of people that are actually experiencing that issue it's a completely unsatisfying talk and
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and depressing and i didn't want to spend the rest of my life sort of reporting the bad news so
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just like you pivoted into how we can positively use technology that's exactly the stimulus that led
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me to ask my laboratory at ucsf and myself can we use technology to accomplish the reverse instead of
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having it to grade our attention and our and our cognitive control abilities can we think about
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developing it in such a way that we can enhance those abilities and so in 2008 um i was really trying
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to uh figure out where we were going to go with that concept that i just described to you and i had
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the idea that we you know we had two pathways one is the traditional approach that neurologists like
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myself tend to go for immediately which is pharmaceuticals of small molecules and we use drugs
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to do this all the time we're to try to do it we do it for adhd we do it for alzheimer's disease
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there are pharmaceuticals out there that have some impact on attention abilities and cognition
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and we actually try to study with one of them it's called aricep that's used to treat alzheimer's
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disease and in in older adults healthy older adults to see if we could help them suppress better we had
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some modest effects and got a paper out of it but it wasn't really what i was looking for and so i
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struck upon this idea of instead of using molecules to use an experience we know that experience drives
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our brains plasticity it's the it's the very basis of all learning it's a non-contentious point
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amongst neuroscientists it's why education exists in the format that we we employ it right now it's
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why therapy exists but the problems with those other forms of experiential you know interventions
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or treatments like education and therapy is that they're not always reproducibly delivered so you have
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better therapists or teachers and worse and so you can't have the same dosage all the time with the
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same potency like you would with a drug so the idea was to use technology to deliver an experience
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in a way that's reproducible and targeted and you know consistent in that manner and the way i came up
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with doing that was through the creation of a video game and so in 2008 i reached out to friends of mine that
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worked at lucas arts a particular friend matt omernik who is running a massive game team building
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the star wars game force unleashed and i asked if they would help us build a game that that i designed
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that they helped develop then develop called neuro eraser a neuro eraser is a multitasking game so on
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the goal management part of that triad the idea was to challenge older adults healthy older adults
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in a closed loop system such that they are constantly being tasked to multitask at a higher and higher level
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and the goal was not to make them better at texting and driving but rather to see if we can engender an
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improvement in the other cognitive control abilities of attention and working memory which we know are
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mechanistically related to multitasking so they use common brain networks with the prefrontal cortex
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and to make a long story short three years later after a big multiple research experiments we found that
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that hypothesis um was well founded and essentially the older adults which were 60 to 80 year olds in our
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study improved their ability to sustain their attention and their working memory even in the setting of
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distraction and multitasking although none of those things were directly part of the training game
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itself and so that was the beginning of a long pathway for us my lab became a center called neuroscape
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i started a company called akili which is now taking that game to the next level and and bringing it into
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fda trials to see if it can be approved as a medical device to treat many different conditions and you know
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the the flip side of the whole story that we started today was that yes we have a distracted mind yes
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technology has created a challenge for us it hasn't made this conflict between goal setting and goal
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enactment that's always existed but it certainly aggravated it but if we are well informed by
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neuroscience and by the burden of technology then we can design new technology or or even leverage
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existing ones to help improve our attention and help alleviate the distracted mind at least to some
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degree that gives me hope that i can have more focus when i'm in my 60s and 70s but let's go back to
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people who are like my age right they're in their 20s or 30s you mentioned earlier yeah the technology
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the our digital technology exacerbates this uh distracted mind and i thought it was interesting
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this this theory of why that is you borrowed it from the world of biology which is the optimal
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forging theory it's which you used to explain like why digital tech in particular makes it so
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distracting for those who aren't familiar with optimal forging theory can you explain that what it is
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and how you apply that to distraction sure so what what we've been talking about is why we are so
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sensitive to interference which would happen if technology was there or not and i think it's it's
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obvious but you know technology because of its you know the access to information that it has offered us
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challenges us and people could you know just in their own experience relate to that concept the question
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is even if you are aware of it many people still feel the burden it's not like oh oh that's there i'm going to
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just stop doing that so one of the more interesting questions to me was why do we engage in this
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voracious consumption of information around us sometimes to the disregard of our safety if it's
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occurring while we're driving or our relationships if it's occurring while you're having dinner with
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your your significant other or at work or at school and so you have all these real world
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implications and yet it goes on at such a you know intense level why is that and so that's what i was
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really searching for and there's a lot of what i think are largely hand-waving explanations of
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it's you know high reward which it is you know the act of switching to novel information does carry a
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greater reward load than sustaining but it felt like there's something more powerful and fundamental
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there and so i was interested in in an evolutionary explanation and i came across a lot of literature on
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what's known as optimal foraging theory and this is essentially a mathematical approach used by
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behavioral ecologists and evolutionary biologists to understand how animals and why and make predictions
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about their behavior forage for food in in the world and what i started to discover is that
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the primate brain the human brain in particular has sort of co-opted some of the ancient reward systems
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that other animals forage for food to drive us to forage for information so that we're essentially
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information seeking creatures in much the way that other animals seek food for survival and if that's
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true then optimal foraging theory which are these models that allow us to predict how animals and why
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they forage in a particular way might apply to us humans foraging for information using technology
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one particular optimal foraging theory the marginal value theorem was particularly interesting to me
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because what it described and there's many different types of optimal foraging theory some
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related to predator prey relationships but this one related to patchy environments was interesting
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because what a patchy environment is is where there's a concentration of resources in one location
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and then sparse or impoverished areas of resources in between them so you know a very obvious example is a
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squirrel in a tree foraging for nuts right so there's a certain amount of nuts in that tree and then at
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some point the animal becomes aware that there are no nuts would be the extreme or that there are less
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nuts so there's a diminishing reward of remaining there and then there is a new tree now if that new
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tree is very close then the animal might make that decision to jump over to the new tree quicker than if
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it's further away and so there's this really interesting cost benefit ratio and relationship
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of remaining in your source versus going to a new source and i thought that was really analogous to
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how we interact with technology because it also exists information exists in patches that patch might be your
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iphone that patch might be a website that you're working on um and or you know even a document the idea
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is that if you are forging for information in a patch you also have those two forces the benefits of
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remaining there but those are often diminishing such as a text exchange where at the end it's just a
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bunch of emojis and it's lost all content and then there is the cost of switching to a new information patch
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and where technology has stressed us is those other information patches are just so accessible now
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right so at one point in history not so long ago you're reading a book if you see something of interest
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you have to go find a new book and look it up and that's like a great cost to get there so you might just
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remain in that source but now it's just the click of a link and you can find out about it and so the ability
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to switch is so easy that it drives this type of behavior so that you know that's a short explanation
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it's multiple chapters in the book but i find it a satisfying one to look at why we consume
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information in the way we do even if we're aware of its negative consequences that's really interesting
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and i'm curious you're in san francisco you're in the bay area silicon valley you're using technology to
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are technology companies and app developers are they aware of
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how the brain works and taking advantage of it so that
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we actually use their stuff more well i don't know that for sure
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i mean there are there are strong statements about that
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um and and you know retorts that that's not the case
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my intuition would be that it's not driven by a deep understanding of the brain but
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it's smart people making business decisions to drive eyeballs on their products and that's the
00:26:52.020
way it's always worked and people were getting better at it and technology has a lot of innate aspects
00:26:58.620
of how it can be delivered that really uh lends itself to challenging the distracted mind and
00:27:06.060
largely because it's about information and information is really core to how we interact
00:27:10.920
with the world and as i just described we're driven to it in a very sort of natural way in an ancient way
00:27:17.940
uh so you know i would suspect that those decisions are not made based on this but i do think that
00:27:26.460
a growing awareness and and that is what i see in my interactions with many tech leaders in in san francisco
00:27:34.340
a growing awareness of this as an issue is is dawning now and what i hope is that this is a pivot point
00:27:43.280
in the evolution of our technology where we recognize strengths and weaknesses of our brain
00:27:52.020
and the opportunity and challenges of technology and we design in a way that is trying to help at the
00:28:00.680
very least at the at the most enhance what makes us human at the least not degrade it not detract from
00:28:06.840
it and i think that should be a part of every development plan of course profit is the bottom
00:28:11.500
line i understand that um i uh started a business myself but it doesn't mean that we should not at
00:28:18.580
least have the conversation about the possible negative consequences of technology we create
00:28:23.880
going back to this idea of of the optimal foraging theory you know you talk about this and i've read
00:28:28.980
this in other places one of the things that makes digital technology particularly a you know
00:28:33.360
addictive quote-unquote is that it's random right you can check sometimes and it's nothing but
00:28:38.500
sometimes you check and it's like oh i got this cool email how does that fit into the optimal foraging
00:28:43.260
theory well you know i think that in a in a fundamental way it it is what drives the the reward
00:28:50.940
cycle in the first place um so it's like you know it's not the details that i was describing of why
00:28:58.020
do you remain versus why you leave in my mind but it is like the underlying engine it is that reward
00:29:03.680
system uh constructed to drive our ancient ancestors to stay alive you know to be able to explore your
00:29:12.000
environment versus exploiting where you are is is this really very fine balance uh that is is fascinating
00:29:19.760
from you know many different aspects of behavior and neuroscience and then when it comes to humans
00:29:25.460
in real world and economics and it impacts pretty much every field you know we we know that novelty
00:29:32.280
um and that randomness you know is our sources of reward so i would say that that sits underneath
00:29:40.120
what we're talking about here which is this understanding of why we stay or switch but that's those are the
00:29:48.000
things that drive that process which could be staying or leaving from you know a very fundamental level
00:29:54.740
so do you have any advice based on your research for people who they they feel like they're not in
00:30:00.220
control of their technology right they're they've become the tools of their tools you know who's that
00:30:04.200
emerson or thoreau said that i don't remember yeah you know i would say that that's that's sort of the
00:30:08.880
basic point of the whole book in the end is what i simply say take control it's it's it's not about
00:30:16.080
abandoning technology it's not about it being good or bad or multitasking being good or bad
00:30:19.880
it's just about making informed decisions based on an understanding of your brain and understanding
00:30:25.140
of technology and understanding of behavior that allows you to make better informed decisions
00:30:30.020
so that you can take control over how you use tech and and live healthier that's that's you know that's
00:30:36.360
how i at least personally try to engage in the world and you know i wouldn't claim to be a self-help
00:30:42.280
guru i'm a neuroscientist but i want to live a good life myself and so that's how i think about it
00:30:48.500
is is having control over how you use tech i think in order to give advice it's it's helpful to talk about
00:30:55.400
two other factors that influence the the marginal value theorem that that optimal foraging model that
00:31:01.400
we talked about i i described the cost of going to a new source is impacted by the new source of the
00:31:09.700
new patch of information being so accessible right there all the time and i think we feel that when
00:31:14.420
we're driving in a car and it's boring and all of a sudden we reach for our phone because it's just
00:31:19.500
right in your pocket but the other source which i just alluded to is on the diminishing value of
00:31:26.460
remaining in a source and i'd say that this is probably unique to humans in some way although i think
00:31:31.960
that's still a research question but there are two very critical factors that make that value of
00:31:38.800
remaining in a single source diminish more rapidly than it would otherwise one of them is boredom
00:31:45.820
evidence would suggest that we have an increased rate of boredom when we remain in a source and
00:31:52.240
probably a decreased tolerance to the sensation of boredom at all the other factor is anxiety of
00:31:59.960
remaining in a source that anxiety could be fomo so fear of missing out which is very prevalent and
00:32:05.740
a source of great anxiety especially to young people and then there's also performance anxiety
00:32:10.520
that by not doing something else you're you're letting an opportunity go by and so boredom and
00:32:16.860
anxiety accumulate quite rapidly when we're sustaining our attention and that makes the value of remaining in
00:32:24.120
a source diminish that much more rapidly than it would otherwise and so given that your value of
00:32:29.840
remaining in the source is decreasing because you're uncomfortable because you're bored or you're anxious
00:32:33.880
and the fact that another source is so close bam switch switch switch switch you know we know that
00:32:40.700
almost everyone reports multitasking during the day and it could be a third of the day and in young
00:32:46.200
people it could be seven devices at a time and i would say it's these forces the boredom and the anxiety
00:32:52.620
decreasing the value of remaining in a source and the accessibility to new sources of information
00:32:58.440
and so if you're if i'm giving advice and i i like to work off of a model not just to throw
00:33:04.160
out good or bad ideas and if you if you take that model and and and that's understandable and and it's
00:33:11.680
validated and it certainly needs work being further validated but if so then you know the levers that you
00:33:18.260
can push on the first would be on the accessibility side decrease accessibility when you're working on
00:33:24.180
something that's really critical that that demands high quality that has your name associated with it
00:33:28.940
not necessarily everything but certainly those things decrease accessibility quit your email program
00:33:34.380
close your door use only one tab you know lots of ways of limiting that very easy access to other
00:33:40.960
information on the other side it's learning how to manage boredom and anxiety of doing one thing at a
00:33:47.180
time and the way i look at it is that that's not something that you could just develop in in one instant
00:33:52.400
because you made a decision it actually takes training and practice and so if you are going to
00:33:57.680
sit down to do one thing like write a paper that's really important an article i would say put an hour
00:34:04.120
aside to do that and nothing else but then take breaks not don't try to do the entire hour most people
00:34:10.180
will not be able to do that in my experience of interacting with many who i've given this advice
00:34:15.120
to but rather do it in five minute intervals and take a break after five minutes and this will help
00:34:21.140
with the boredom and anxiety but the key thing is not to take a tech break not to go on social media
00:34:27.700
or to open your email program because that just creates these sort of iterative loops and these
00:34:33.060
sinkholes that pull you further away from accomplishing that goal of doing one thing in an hour rather do
00:34:38.780
some light exercise close your eyes do some mindfulness meditation expose yourself to nature if that's
00:34:44.620
possible and then you know set that for a short period of time and then get right back into it and over time
00:34:50.420
you'll find that you could work for longer periods before having to take these types of breaks so
00:34:55.780
that's some of the advice or at least advice that i've given myself that's awesome you know what's
00:35:00.200
helped me too is realizing coming to the realization that those other information patches that are out
00:35:06.040
there they're boring too like like twitter like i i used to be big on twitter but then i realized like
00:35:11.880
it's the same like i'm going to see the exact same thing every time i get on there it's not going to
00:35:15.700
really change yeah so i have no desire to i have like no desire to make the switch because i i know
00:35:20.660
that the information isn't all that useful or interesting yeah and you know that that's the
00:35:25.180
last piece that i didn't talk about but i'm glad you alluded to we call it metacognition and it's
00:35:30.180
really this this awareness um awareness of how of your limitations in in your ability to focus your
00:35:37.520
attention your working memory the the the cost that comes with switching the degraded performance that
00:35:43.420
you're almost uh undoubtedly going to be achieving if you switch and come back and then of course the
00:35:49.280
awareness of what technology has to offer and that what's waiting over there is not so much better
00:35:54.060
over here and so you know awareness is critical i think to make a change because it's motivating
00:35:59.940
but it's not enough in itself we know that for smoking cessation and dealing with sun exposure and
00:36:06.280
even diet you need to have a plan and a strategy to then enact it but i do think it's it's an
00:36:11.900
important part is is that awareness well i'm curious you've done this research the video games
00:36:16.840
with neuro racer to help older individuals have you done this for you know 20 or 30 somethings we're
00:36:23.000
doing that right now so one of our one of our goals are to expand beyond aging and to move the tools
00:36:29.400
that we create we have multiple games at neuroscape we have six games some are meditation based we have
00:36:35.540
a game called meditrain we have a rhythm based game called rhythmicity a physical fitness meets
00:36:40.240
cognitive fitness motion capture game called body brain trainer a game that's actually targeting
00:36:45.440
towards teenagers to help with patience and sustained attention some of them are mobile games some use
00:36:51.300
virtual reality some are motion capture and we're interested in these being clinical tools as we
00:36:56.920
described but also wellness for healthy adults and education tools for young people one of my big
00:37:03.580
sort of complaints about our education system is that so much has focused on the transferring of
00:37:08.640
information content but not building the underlying information processing systems that a young developing
00:37:14.880
brain you know needs and and and requires to perform at a high level and so we are now looking across
00:37:22.520
multiple populations talking about the younger distracted mind achille has a game called evo which
00:37:29.720
was what developed sort of the next generation of neurists or the game that we tested on older adults
00:37:35.300
that game is now in a phase three fda trial to seek approval as a therapeutic device to help uh pediatric
00:37:45.640
adhd uh so essentially the distracted mind in its ultimate form you know young uh people and children and
00:37:54.480
young adults that are you know unable to really maintain sustained attention which has led many of them to be
00:38:03.440
placed on drugs like adderall can we use this game which challenges multitasking to help improve
00:38:10.120
sustained attention and working memory which we showed in older adults and if we could show that
00:38:15.220
then it will uh hopefully become the first non-drug treatment for adhd and the first prescribable video
00:38:21.600
game so that's uh hopefully stay tuned in 2018 that's great so this you would need a prescription to
00:38:26.660
actually get this video game that particular one so we have many games i said at neuroscape but
00:38:31.260
what achille has decided to do is to tackle this massive multi-billion dollar incumbent of the
00:38:36.720
pharmaceutical industry where there's really one treatment right now uh for a lots of conditions
00:38:43.040
adhd being the one that that we're focusing on most acutely and the idea is to put something into the
00:38:49.680
system that is really a direct challenge that can be prescribed by a physician with confidence that
00:38:54.640
could be reimbursed by insurance treated as what we describe as a digital medicine as opposed to a
00:38:59.780
molecular medicine so yes that that is the first pathway of that particular game interesting well
00:39:04.800
adam this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work so i talked
00:39:09.060
about two entities in this conversation one my the research center at ucsf that i founded and direct
00:39:16.220
but we have many amazing faculty members here and a big team we have our own technology development
00:39:22.220
program uh that's called neuroscape so neuroscape.ucsf.edu uh we just recently built a brand new
00:39:30.260
website there's a mailing list there's just a ton of content on there that we're constantly updating
00:39:35.180
and then there's of course the company that spun out of our work called achille
00:39:38.920
achilleinteractive.com will also be another source of information more on the clinical side and what's
00:39:44.880
happening with the first game that left the laboratory and we're trying to get out into the
00:39:50.380
world fantastic well adam thank you so much for your time it's been an absolute pleasure my pleasure
00:39:54.220
as well thank you my guest name is adam gazaley he's the author of the book the distracted mind
00:39:58.460
ancient brains in a high-tech world it's available on amazon.com you can also find out more information
00:40:03.040
out about his work at neuroscape.uscf.edu also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:40:09.940
slash distracted bring fine links to resources bring delve deeper into this topic
00:40:13.600
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:40:29.080
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the
00:40:32.620
show i've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on
00:40:35.720
itunes or stitcher helps that a lot as always thank you for your continued support and until next
00:40:39.540
time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly