How many types of attention are there? Part 1 | Neurons

high-level attention-guiding mechanisms that are called working memories.

Selective attention is the cognitive process in which the brain attends to a small number of sensory inputs while filtering out what it deems unnecessary distractions.

Humans can process 10–50 bits of information per second with their conscious attention. The what, how, and why behind that information we choose to process will determine our quality of life. That is, what we hold in our attention, how we interpret that information, and why we gave it our attention in the first place is of utmost importance. Focus

Alerting, which indicates when to attend, and adapts our level of vigilance. Orienting, which signals what to attend to, and amplifies any object of interest. Executive attention, which decides how to process the attended information, selects the processes that are relevant to a given task, and controls their execution.

There’s no tidy “attention center” in the brain. Instead, an ensemble of alerting, orienting, and executive networks collaborate to attune you to what’s going on in your inner or outer world in a coherent way that points you toward an appropriate response.

Here, we need to puzzle over notes and find the best fit. It is much more associative, playful and creative than the other tasks and requires a very different kind of attention as well. Reading, of course, is also different. Reading in itself can require very different kinds of attention, depending on the text. Some texts need to be read slowly and