Mental… umm… Focus: A Pragmatist’s Guide

June 30th, 2009

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to work when something is on your mind? Ever lay awake, desperate to sleep but finding no rest from your thoughts? Of course you have; we all have.

Few things are as frustrating as having our own minds control us. Mental focus is a skill we overlook until it’s gone. Then, the loss of control becomes an all-consuming problem. But what is happening inside us? And how do we train ourselves to see past the distractions, to see clearly once again? This article will seek to explain the physiology of the situation and present a pragmatic solution to control our concentration.

Mental Focus

Although loosely defined, mental focus in this article refers to control of one’s thoughts. There are several different subsets of mental focus defined in clinical studies; however, since this is a pragmatist’s guide, we will narrow the list down to those which most help us in daily life:

• Focus Control: freeing oneself from distraction and competing stimuli (Sohlberg and Mateer’s Selective Attention type)
• Focus Endurance: maintaining attention over an extended period of time, even while using mental processes (Sustained Attention)
• Focus Flexibility: being able to jump from one thought process to another, maintaining concentration (Alternating Attention)

When looking at these areas of mental focus, parallels can be drawn with physical fitness. Control, endurance, and flexibility are skills that can be learnt with the right type of practice.

What Happens During Focus

When you intently focus on something, various regions of the brain spring to life. The region held most responsible for mental focus is the prefrontal cortex, found behind the forehead.

This region, more than others, gets excited when you focus your attention. The excitement comes in the form of electrical activity when signaling cells (neurons) fire. While the brain is always putting out some electrical activity, the frequency of this activity is particularly high during focus, measuring around 40 to 60 hertz.

To put it simply, the brain is getting exercise.

Much like muscles, when the brain is repetitively exercised, it adapts. The next time you focus, you’ll be a little better at doing so. Also like a muscle, when areas of the brain are not used they suffer atrophy, withering away. In this way, focusing gives you focus.

How to Measure Focus

Tracking one’s mental focus helps to see progress and encourages results. Two popular methods used to detect mental focus in the brain are EEG and fMRI.

Using EEG equipment, the neurons’ electrical activity can be measured much like a seismograph or polygraph, with a perpetual line which jumps up and down to show activity. These measurements are sometimes referred to as brain waves. Gamma wave activity, recorded at a frequency surrounding the 40 to 60 hertz range, often represents mental focus. The ability to trigger and control these gamma oscillations seems to be key.

Unfortunately, to properly analyze these brainwaves requires the time-intensive application of a sensor cap. This equipment is not practical for home use, although many simplified versions are available on the consumer market nowadays.

fMRI, rather than sensing the brainwaves, provides an image of the brain, highlighting the zones experiencing increased blood flow activity. If imaged by a fMRI machine while concentrating, increased activity will show in the prefrontal cortex. Studies show the intensity of this activity increases with little practice.

fMRI machines are entirely unpractical for the average person, running into the millions of dollars and requiring qualified technicians to operate. Even simply being imaged with one of these in-demand machines costs upwards of hundreds of dollars.

Seeing as how EEGs and fMRIs are unpractical, what is left are psychology tests. They pose questions like “do you get distracted when reading a book”, or have you perform a certain task, recording the results. These types of tests are inaccurate when lying (whether to the person giving the test or yourself) and can be quite unreliable when self-administered.

Most practically, tracking mental focus progress can be done by grading your own ability in the three main areas (focus control, focus endurance, and focus flexibility) and tracking the scores over time.

Perhaps when all is said and done, the best way to approach focus measurement is not to do it at all. Provided you are truly working on building your mental focus, the impracticality of these tracking methods become irrelevant.

How cool would it be to have a giant fMRI and EEG lab at home though? Oh well.

How to Build Focus

With practice the principal of neuroplasticity takes place and the parts of the brain responsible for mental focus can be trained like a muscle. There’s one well established system, used for thousands of years as a way to build focus and mental strength. Drumroll please…

Meditation.

The Western world may still have an apathetic opinion of meditation, but there is no denying its effectiveness. Buddhist monks, when placed in fMRI tubes measure prefrontal cortex activity off the charts. When simply asked to concentrate, their EEG gamma wave readings bounce like a seismograph during an earthquake. They’re definitely in control of their minds.

For those too set in their disdain for Eastern styles of meditation, mental exercise is available through other means. Mindfulness meditation, for example, has been increasingly studied and prescribed by Western doctors, and certain versions of it contain no religious or spiritual references whatsoever.

Ironically you can also build focus, by simply focusing! Opportunities to focus intently on one or more tasks, often for prolonged periods, arise throughout the course of a normal day. These moments of forced focus, however labored at first, become easier with effort.

Nevertheless, a structured meditation program, with the help of an experienced teacher is clearly advantageous, even if only to keep you practicing on a schedule.

Summary

Nothing worthwhile comes easy and mental focus is no exception. Similar to physical fitness, mental focus requires a lifestyle change, making it hard to get but easier to maintain. The most established way to introduce this change is though regular meditation practice. Studies show meditation practice creates measurable changes in brain composition and brain wave activity.

Working to enhance the control, endurance, and flexibility of your mental focus can help you in manifest ways. Meditation has proven to be a quality framework to introduce these improvements. The only question is whether you are willing to make the substantial life changes required to see its benefits.

If you are willing, then good luck and keep at it. It will pay off.