As a network of head injury solicitors, the team at Brain Injury Group are always interested by any research regarding the brain ā even when it is not related to brain trauma.
New findings have recently been added to research conducted several years ago by Tamami Nakano of Osaka University and her colleagues, on the link between blinking and certain brain functions.
The beginning of the study involved getting 20 healthy adults to watch extracts of the series Mr Bean.
Previously it had been noted that people watching parts of this show blinked at the same moments during the viewing. This time, studying brain activity showed that when participants blinked there was a brief decrease in activity in the ‘dorsal attention network’, as well as a moment of increased activity in the ‘default-mode network’.
Further research recently found that during conversations, a speaker will blink during pauses in their discourse, and this will be followed by a listener blinking a split-second afterwards.
Scientists involved in the study believe this shows blinking helps the brain move from one cognitive task to the next. Human beings can only focus their attention on a certain number of things at a time ā so the brain requires a system which enables it to shift focus.
Mark Stokes, who is the head of the Attention Group at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA) says the study “provides exciting new evidence for the intriguing idea that the brain is constantly fine tuning the sense organs by momentarily shutting off the flow of information to help control the flow of cognitive operations”.
