11:11 Angels Message Board

Attention is thought to have evolved to solve one of the brain’s biggest challenges: There is far more information in our environment than the brain can fully process. Without a way to filter, the relentless sensory input we receive would leave us overloaded, incapable of functioning effectively. One way to think about attention is that it’s like a flashlight. It allows us to select and direct our brain’s computational resources to a smaller subset of information. We can narrow our sights onto a portion of the page while reading to ensure that the letters and our comprehension remain crisp and clear; or we can direct our attentional flashlight to a conversation partner to key in on her voice in a crowded room. At the brain level, attention works by selectively biasing sensory neural activity so that information that is attended vs. unattended shows a greater neural response.