People viewing you as being strange and eccentric, in a bad way.People seeing you as being rude, aloof, or checked out.People seeing you as being slow, dopey, or ditzy.Embarrassing yourself when you have to ask someone to repeat something they just told you, or you zone out to the point where your friends have to wave their hands in front of your face while going, "Hello?!?".People getting offended because you come across as if you're not interested or listening.If you zone out a lot these may happen to you: For others their spacey tendencies have consequences. If someone disappears into their head a lot while socializing it may not be a huge problem for them, but they still wonder why they do it so much. Possible effects of constantly zoning out in conversations Below I'll cover many reasons someone might zone out while socializing, then give some suggestions for reducing the tendency to do it. Others can use one part of their mind to follow the interaction and look like they're listening, but another track in their brain is daydreaming, thinking of chores they have to do later, or maybe even beating themselves up over past mistakes. ![]() Some space out to the point where they miss what the other person said, and they're noticeably staring off into the distance. By focusing on a specific part of the basal ganglia called the subthalamic nucleus, or STN, which is normally responsible for translating signals from other parts of the brain to help with movement and coordination, they found that that area in particular was disrupted when the participant was surprised by a sound.Some people frequently zone out or have their mind wander during conversations. ![]() Importantly, they were able to look even closer at the brain activity of the participants with Parkinson's who'd been interrupted by the surprising sounds. When researchers looked at the brain activity of the healthy people and the people with Parkinson's when they'd been interrupted by surprising sounds, they found amped up activity around a part of the brain that scientists think plays a key role in coordination called the basal ganglia. Next, they were shown a second set of letters, which they had to decide either matched the first set or did not.Ĭompared to the people who heard the familiar tone, those who heard the surprising sound - the birdsong - were wrong more frequently, suggesting that their memory had been interrupted. As they viewed the letters, they were interrupted by either a tone (which they'd been accustomed to hearing) or a birdsong (which they were not accustomed to hearing). While they monitored their brain activity, the researchers showed all of the participants a series of letters. This allowed the researchers to gather some critical data from deep inside the brain tissue which they normally wouldn't be able to see. For the healthy people, they looked at brain activity using an EEG, a tool that uses sensors to monitor electric waves in the brain that goes on over the head, and for those with Parkinson's, they were able to use an LFP, which monitors electric waves from inside the brain. Importantly, all the participants with Parkinson's had previously undergone some form of neurosurgery before entering the trial. ![]() To figure it out, researchers at the University of Iowa looked at the electrical activity in the brains of 20 healthy participants and seven people with Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by difficulties with motor skills like walking or talking, while they subjected them to a series of sounds. Interruptions to our trains of thought happen all the time, often managing to wipe our mind blank so we forget how we were going to finish that sentence.Īnd a new study published Monday in Nature Communications nails down exactly what in the brain may be happening when that interruption happens. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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