A new UC Davis study shows how the brain reconfigures its connections to minimize distractions¹（分心，干扰） and take best advantage of our knowledge of situations. "In order to behave efficiently², you want to process relevant sensory³ information as fast as possible, but relevance⁴ is determined⁵ by your current situation," said Joy Geng, assistant professor of psychology⁶ at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain.

For example, a flashing road sign alerts us to traffic merging⁷ ahead; or a startled animal might cue（提示，暗示） you to look out for a hidden predator⁸.

When concentrating on a specific task, it's helpful to reconfigure brain networks so that task-relevant information is processed most efficiently and external distractions are reduced, Geng found.

Geng and co-author Nicholas DiQuattro, a graduate student in psychology, used functional⁹ magnetic resonance¹⁰ imaging to study brain activity in volunteers carrying out a simple test. They compared their results to mathematical models to infer connectivity between different areas of the brain. The study appeared in the Dec. 7 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

The subjects had to look for a letter "T" in a box and indicate which way it faced by pressing a button. They were also presented with a "distractor": another letter T in a box, but rotated 90 degrees.

The distractor was either similar in appearance to the target, or brightened to be more attention-getting.

Subjects did better in trials with an "attention-getting" distractor than a less obvious one, and lit up specific areas of the brain accordingly.

The new work shows that the brain doesn't always "ramp¹¹ up" to deal with the situation at hand, Geng said. Instead, it changes how traffic moves through the existing hard-wired network -- rather like changing water flow through a network of pipes or information flow over a computer network -- in order to maximize efficiency.