Sudden Distraction and the LC-NE system

Distraction is a unavoidable part of our everyday lives, and there is an urgent need to understand how distraction impairs our ability to perform everyday tasks. Distraction, for instance, has been shown to lag behind only intoxication and speed in causing car accidents. Indeed, research conducted at the QUT Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety shows that distracted driving has an estimated cost of $495 million per year on Queensland roads.

In our research, we investigate the effects of one critical but overlooked component of distraction – its sudden onset. The project derives its innovative approach to distraction from recent neurophysiological advances in understanding a key neural system: the Locus Coeruleus–Norepinephrine system. The aims are to establish the role of the Locus Coeruleus in sudden distraction and to examine how sudden distraction interacts with both environmental and internal factors. This research is funded by a Discovery Grant (DP190100223) from the Australian Research Council.

Selected Research on Sudden Distraction:

Jefferies, L.N., Iarocci, G. & Di Lollo, V. (under review). Atypical responsivity to sudden events

impairs visual perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A novel paradigm to assess the functioning of the Locus Coeruleus Norepinephrine system.

Jefferies, L.N., Ambrose, M. & Di Lollo, V. (2020). What factors influence the switch from unitary

to divided attention? Psychological Research (online first). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01500-x

Jefferies, L. N., & Di Lollo, V. (2019). Sudden events change old visual objects into new ones: A

possible role for phasic activation of Locus Coeruleus. Psychological science, 30, 55-64.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pd f/10.1177/0956797618807190