ADHD and Owls

Perknose

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 9, 1999
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"Kids with ADHD are easily distracted. Barn owls are not.

So a team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore is studying these highly focused predatory birds in an effort to understand the brain circuits that control attention.

[...]

Several years ago, Mysore and Eric Knudsen, a professor at Stanford, identified a system in the owl midbrain that appears to control which stimulus to ignore. Now, Mysore’s lab is trying to understand exactly how that system works.

“One of the coolest things has been the identification of a particular group of neurons in the midbrain that we think are the ones controlling distractor suppression,” he says.

In other words, these seem to be the precise neurons that tell a brain when to start ignoring sights and sounds that aren’t important at that moment.

That could be critical to understanding why people with attention disorders have so much trouble ignoring distractions, Mysore says."

^^^ I think what this article is trying to say . . . WAIT, is that a marmoset over there? o_O
 
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mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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I was on the verge of parading my ignorance when I decided to google the history of ADHD instead :)
 
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lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
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I once saw an owl sitting on a snag about 7' up. I went right up to it, circled 365° checking it out. It gave zero fucks about me. I was so close I could have grabbed it, but that probably wouldn't have worked out well for me :^D
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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I march in a parade of my ignorance far too often myself. :(

As long as you're receptive to being corrected and admitting fault where appropriate, what does it matter? It's orders of magnitude better than the opposite :)
 

Mayne

Diamond Member
Apr 13, 2014
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reminds me of the time I was at a bush party and there was an owl sitting on a branch. I went right up to it and started patting it...it totally ignored me. Pretty cool experience.