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

We use the word attention to describe top-down processes.

whenever you’re asked a question you feel the neurological need to focus on it. You see, questions literally “arrest” our attention,

To recap, there are four components in the human attentional system: the mind-wandering mode, the central executive mode, the attentional filter, and the attentional switch, which directs neural and metabolic resources among the mind-wandering, stay-on-task, or vigilance modes.

A finding from the literature on memory, known as the levels-of-processing effect, suggests that it isn’t simply how much time you spend paying attention to information that determines what you retain but, crucially, how you think about that information while you pay attention to it.

Author Stanislas Dehaene called the part of the brain that allows us to think “a vast neuronal forest.” Can you remember what scientists now call the vast network of neurons in your brain? We discussed many things that your brain can do to help you become a better writer. Can you list five? If your memory retention was good, pat yourself on the bac

It’s important to realize attention and peripheral awareness are two different ways of “knowing” the world. 2 Each has its virtues as well as its shortcomings. Attention singles out some small part of the content of the field of conscious awareness from the rest in order to analyze and interpret it. On the other hand, peripheral awareness is more h

When it comes to focused attention, we focus on one thing only, something we can sustain for only a few seconds. The maximum duration of focused attention seems not to have changed over time (Doyle and Zakrajsek 2013, 91). Focused attention is different from “sustained attention,” which we need to stay focused on one task for a longer period and is