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Posted by United Press International on April 29, 2010, 6:14 pm
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WATERLOO, Ontario, April 29 (UPI) -- A Canadian study
suggests that when a person's eyes increase blinking it can mean the
person's mind is wandering.
Associate Professor Daniel Smilek and colleagues at the
University of Waterloo say when your mind wanders, you're not paying
attention to what's going in front of you. And his new findings
suggest it's not just the mind, it's the body that's also involved.
Smilek, a cognitive neuroscientist, said he was inspired by
brain research that showed when the mind wanders parts of the brain
that process external events are less active.
"And we thought, OK, if that's the case, maybe we'd see that
the body would start to do things to prevent the brain from
receiving external information. The simplest thing that might happen
is you might close your eyes more," he said.
So, Smilek and colleagues Jonathan Carriere and J. Allan
Cheyne studied how often people blink when their mind wanders and
discovered people did blink more when their minds were wandering
than when they were on task.
"What we suggest is that when you start to mind-wander, you
start to gate the information even at the sensory endings -- you
basically close your eyelid so there's less information coming into
the brain," Smilek said.
The team reports the research in the journal Psychological
Science.
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