Understanding Attention

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The brain filters and interprets reality rather than just recording it, so there is no objective "out there."

Our beliefs and expectations influence what we perceive as possible, including limiting how we see ourselves.

Meditation, training, and new experiences can revise deeply embedded beliefs to allow for a person to change.

Most of us go through life assuming that what we see around us is reality. That’s a table. There’s a tree. We hear words spoken to us. An hour passes on the clock we see. Our brain takes in all of this, and we experience it. Except, from the standpoint of neuroscience, that’s not really what’s happening. In fact, the brain doesn’t give us an unedited picture of the world. It filters a remarkable amount of information, picks out what it thinks matters, combines that with what we already know and expect, and gives us something closer to a working model of reality. Yikes! You mean there’s nothing “out there” to be perceived other than our own perceptions?

Pretty much yes, in some sense, that's a true statement, and it all starts with our senses. Human vision detects only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our hearing also has limits. Even with the things our senses can detect, most never get to our conscious awareness. The brain must be selective, otherwise we’d be overwhelmed by information and pretty much incapable of doing anything. Then something even more astounding happens. What we expect to see can influence what we actually perceive. Neuroscience research has shown that prior expectations affect the brain’s processing of incoming information delivered by the senses. The brain continually pulls out previous experiences to make predictions about........

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