SFU psychologist John McDonald demonstrates how conductive gel is injected into sensors worn by SFU first year master’s student Ashley Livingstone. The gel allows electrical fields to flow from Livingstone’s brain into the researchers’ recording apparatus.
Read: Scientists Discover Brain’s Anti-Distraction System
John McDonald, a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience, and other scientists first discovered the existence of the specific neural index of suppression in his lab in 2009. But, until now, little was known about how it helps us ignore visual distractions.