Vulnerability to distraction varies across the general population and significantly affects one’s capacity to stay focused on and successfully complete the task at hand, whether at school, on the road, or at work. In this talk, I will begin by discussing how distractibility is typically assessed in the literature and introduce our innovative ERP approach to measuring it. Since distractibility is a cardinal symptom of ADHD, I will introduce its most widely used paper-and-pencil screening tool for the general population as external validation. Following that, I will present the Load Theory of Attention and explain how we used perceptual load to test the reliability of our neural marker of distractibility. Finally, I will highlight potential future applications of this marker in clinical and educational settings.

The human brain is a heavily interconnected structure giving rise to complex functions. While brain functionality is mostly revealed during wakefulness, the sleeping brain might offer another view into physiological and pathological brain connectivity. Furthermore, there is a large body of evidence supporting that sleep mediates plastic changes in brain connectivity. Although brain plasticity depends on environmental input which is provided in the waking state, disconnection during sleep might be necessary for integrating new into existing information and at the same time restoring brain efficiency. In this talk, I will present structural, molecular, and electrophysiological markers of brain connectivity and sleep-dependent restoration that we have evaluated using Magnetic Resonance Imaging and electroencephalography in a healthy population. In a second step, I will show how we translated the gained findings into two clinical populations in which alterations in brain connectivity have been described, the neuropsychiatric disorder attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the neurologic disorder thalamic ischemic stroke.