Have you ever been surprised and thenWhere was I going with this'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.And a new study published Monday in Nature Communications nails down exactly what in the brain may behappening when that interruption happens.To figure itout, researchers at the University of Iowa looked at the electrical activity in the brains of 20 healthy participantsandseven people with Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by difficulties withmotor skills like walking or talking, while they subjected them to a series of sounds.Importantly, all the participants withParkinson's had previously undergone some form of neurosurgery before entering the trial. This allowed the researchers to gather some critical datafrom deep inside the brain tissue which they normally wouldn't be able to see.For the healthy people, they looked at brainactivity usingan 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 useanLFP, which monitors electric waves from inside the brain.While they monitored their brain activity, the researchers showed all of theparticipants a seriesof letters. As they viewed the letters, theywere interrupted by either a tone (which they'd been accustomedto hearing) or a birdsong (which they were not accustomed to hearing). Next, they were shown a second set of letters, whichthey had todecide eithermatched the first set or did not.Compared to the people who heard the familiar tone, those who heard the surprising sound the birdsongwere wrongmore frequently, suggesting that their memory had been interrupted.Whenresearcherslookedat the brain activity of the healthy people and the people with Parkinson'swhen they'dbeen interrupted bysurprising sounds, theyfound amped up activityaround a part of the brain thatscientists think plays a key role incoordination calledthe basal ganglia.Importantly, they were able to look even closer at the brain activity ofthe participants with Parkinson's who'd been interrupted bythe surprising sounds. By focusing on aspecific part of the basal ganglia called the subthalamic nucleus, or STN, which is normallyresponsible for translating signals from other parts of the brainto help withmovement and coordination, they found that that area in particular was disrupted when the participant was surprised by a sound.By learning more about what activates this area, the researchers hopeto betterunderstand whymotor activity is sometimes suppressedin people with Parkinson's.So the next time you're interrupted by a text and completely forget what you were going to say next, you can blame your basal gangliafor responding so extremely.NEXT:We're on the verge of seeing cancer in a drastically different lightCHECK OUT:12 everyday stretches to stay flexible and fit at any ageJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: Here's how the '8 glasses of water a day' myth started and why it's not scientifically true
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