John Medina's Brain Rules

Entry 052: Paying Attention to Attention

Walking through campus one day, I saw a person wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with this comment:

“Sorry, my attention span is the length of this sentence.”

I chuckled as we passed, sensing a certain familiarity. I often lecture about how the brain selectively attends to some stimuli (and rejects others), and what happens when the brain’s filtering systems break down. I even allocated a chapter to it in my book Brain Rules.

These next few entries are devoted to updating that discussion. This new series - called “Paying Attention to Attention” – focuses on a single question: How does the brain pay attention to things?

At one level, the discussion should be a short and easy exercise. We haven’t the foggiest idea how the brain pays attention to things. After all these years, there are still no universally agreed-to set of behaviors – let alone neurological substrates - whose sole job is housing the neurological equivalent of a spotlight. There may not even be one.

That doesn’t mean our effort will be bereft of content, happily. Attentional questions are relevant from people interested in ADHD to people interested in selling you a bar of soap/. Many are deeply concerned that our digital devices are changing our ability to pay attention to anything.

So we’re going to give it a try. Perhaps maybe we will have some help. Beginning with this entry, the series will be primarily composed of videos. Viewing them will be as simple as clicking on the thumbnail below, most less than three minutes long. In fact, I’ve entitled these videos “John Medina’s Brain Rules in Three Minutes or Less.”

Some things won’t change, however. I will still endeavor my grumpy best to provide to you with as clear and lay-friendly explanations as the data allow. As ever, all references will be provided in the text, so you can look this stuff up for yourselves.  Taken together, we’ll see if there is any truth to my friend’s one-sentence T-shirt. And we’ll do it with me talking to you directly.

I hope you enjoy the new format.