The Simple Neuroscience of Attention
By: Natalie Wilcox and Brandon Slade - Founder of Untapped Learning
There is a lot going on in our world, every day, all the time. Think of an airport with its thousands of travelers each going in their own direction, food stalls with people eating and chatting, and the constant drone of flight announcements. The airport is going to be used as an analogy for the craziness of life as a whole for understanding the neuroscience of attention. Attention can be broken down into two types: top-down and bottom-up. Top-down involves conscious control from higher cognitive areas, such as the prefrontal cortex. This would be used to search a flight board for the gate of your flight. Bottom-up attention is an involuntary process where attention is caught by elements of the environment, such as looking to get out of the way of a cart with a blaring horn. Bottom-up attention functions to keep us safe from dangerous events by orienting ourselves to loud noises and bright lights. Whenever our body does something to keep us safe and alive (such as eating), our brain releases a small amount of dopamine, the reward hormone. People with ADHD have a lower natural amount of dopamine; this means that every little dopamine release by the brain is a much bigger reward. So every little text tone, or bird flying past the window, or sound coming from the kitchen, is similar to a blaring cart horn demanding attention.
For more information, visit untappedlearning.com.
