
How we pay attention changes the shape of our brains - pseudolus
https://lithub.com/how-we-pay-attention-changes-the-very-shape-of-our-brains/
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BigHatLogan
I've been thinking about this a lot more recently, especially because I've
been trying to quit social media. One of the more insidious parts of spending
all day scrolling, tweeting, and swiping, is that you become what you pay
attention to. I think it was Frederick Douglas, the 19th century abolitionist,
who said: "A man is worked on by what he works on." We don't live in a vacuum,
conjuring thoughts on our own. The things we do have a huge impact on the
things we think, whether we realize that or not.

I'm also reminded of the biblical passage: "Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds."
I'm not particularly religious but that line has always stuck with me.

I think that might be less, "If I ask for a car I'll get a car", and more "If
I tune my senses towards whatever it is I want (a promotion, a new job, to be
a better parent), then subconsciously my brain might start working to better
see those opportunities where they exist." I've seen firsthand in my career
that people who were open to opportunities advanced much farther than I did
because I closed myself to all of them, waving them away, acting cynical about
the whole endeavor. I wish I hadn't done that. I just wasn't seeing what my
coworkers were seeing.

I'll stop myself before I keep rambling.

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eebynight
You just summarized the positive/effective aspects of what the “Law of
Attraction” group teaches.

Most people think they are crazy for wishing and imagining things to happen
but what you described is exactly what underlies all their teachings.

You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it, simple as that.

I really think this can open up another discussion about your thoughts and how
you see yourself. This is another powerful tool to enable change.

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pbhjpbhj
>You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it, simple as that. //

That does sound simple; and wrong. Have you really never found something you
weren't looking for, my wife for one.

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eebynight
You’re right, there’s always an exception.

I just don’t see myself stumbling into a successful, fulfilling and rewarding
career without atleast making some sort of effort here...

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ronilan
In English awareness is gained with money - pay attention

In Hebrew awareness is gained with emotion (put heart) - שים לב

Any native speakers of other languages able to chime in? Sapir-Whorf revived?

Edit: used word awareness to clarify what is being gained.

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raz32dust
That's interesting. In the 3 Indian languages that I know, it roughly
translates to "devote attention". Not so different from pay I guess, but pay
is more transactional compared to devotion, and devotion to something feels
more heartfelt than paying for something.

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ronilan
Can you post the language name and then the phrase in native type?

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abrax3141
Attention has long been studied in cognitive science, and has been a feature
of computational cognitive models literally ever since there have been such
things. Here's a paper from 1997 that explicitly uses attentional focus:
[http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/1997v21/i03/p0305p0350/MAIN...](http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/1997v21/i03/p0305p0350/MAIN.PDF)

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iapsngh
My take on this is that to eliminate distractions, the given task should be
interesting enough to engage attention.

Like in the gorilla experiment, the main task was to count the number of
passes of the white team and the participants did good at coming up with the
right number.

In my opinion missing the gorilla actually makes sense if it's all about
paying attention because the task was to count the passes and not look for a
gorilla.

Had the task been about watching out for a gorilla then one could say that
there was lack of attention in spotting the gorilla.

To help students learn effectively, the content and method of delivery has to
be interesting enough to eliminate distractions i.e. the gorilla.

~~~
Woberto
I think it depends on the situation and on what the gorilla is representing.
If a teacher is trying to teach addition and the student focuses on the
symbols instead of the overall concept, they're attending to the wrong task.
They don't know what the gorilla is or that they're missing it.

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a9h74j
FWIW the American psychologist/philosopher William James once compared long
spans of attention to weight lifting. The more you do, the more you can do
easily.

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swayvil
They make no mention of meditation.

In meditation we address attention directly. It is what we study. It is the
wood we whittle.

We get great control over attention. What we attend to and how perfectly we
hold our attention upon it.

Also, we have another trick. To refrain from paying attention to anything. It
is named variously Vipassana, Zazen, Asamprajnata Dhyana... depending on the
tradition.

It's impressive.

Consider how paying attention is a reductive process. Ie : given your
perspective, choose some part of it and restrict your attention to that. Thus
your perspective is reduced.

You might say that Vipassana achieves the opposite.

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agumonkey
Talking about Dehaene someone linked a graph about arithmetic performance
across decades

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EPPW105XkAEG9F2?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EPPW105XkAEG9F2?format=jpg&name=small)

(from this thread, in french,
[https://twitter.com/BenhammouCom/status/1221556188032258048](https://twitter.com/BenhammouCom/status/1221556188032258048))

"surprising" regression. Sorry for the tangent.

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user00012-ab
That article had lots of words, but did it actually give any useful advice on
fixing your attention?

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codingmess
Unfortunately I seem to have the passed the point of no return: I can't focus
long enough to read an article on how to learn to focus for longer times :-(

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user00012-ab
No, I think "writers" just write because they are paid to, so they use 10000
words instead of being precise and getting to the point.

I wish people could just state their idea and be done, instead of padding it
out to make it look more "official"

~~~
npsimons
> No, I think "writers" just write because they are paid to, so they use 10000
> words instead of being precise and getting to the point.

There is validity to this - "brevity is the soul of wit." but some things need
deep, long thought to properly comprehend. Combine this with the attention
deficit that it is all but obvious modern media has pushed us towards, and I
am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to some articles, particularly
articles that address this problem.

Edit: Upon gathering my attention and finishing my read of TFA, I concur with
your analysis. I further postulate that it appears to be a teaser for the
author's book.

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npsimons
So much for my focus; I'm only five paragraphs in and already my mind is
wandering to "hmm, attention, this reminds me of 'The Rock Warrior's Way'
which itself draws from Carlos Castaneda's 'The Teachings of Don Juan', and oh
crap, I haven't finished that book either . . . "

ETA: I'll leave these for the curious:

> "Proper use of attention, in warrior-speak, is impeccability."

> "When acting impeccably, a warrior directs all of his attention toward his
> ultimate quest: to gain self-knowledge and personal power."

> "Essentially, a warrior is an _impeccable hunter of personal power_."

ETA2: Gah! I keep getting distracted. Now the mention of "Alerting; Orienting;
and Executive Attention." makes me think of John Boyd and his OODA loop,
another thing I've been meaning to look into.

ETA3: Well, fuck. Looks like I need to start gaming again:

> "Far from reducing our ability to concentrate, video games can actually
> increase it. They are a powerful stimulant of attention."

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JabavuAdams
I was initially dismissive due to the obvious title, but I'm glad I read it.
Lots of great information in here, including the famous Gorilla experiment.
Lots of pointers to interesting brain stuff.

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toss1
Yes, the filtering systems of the brain are amazing, and the Invisible Gorilla
experiment is particularly fun!

Another striking experiment I learned of in neuroscience courses shows how
deep it goes. A particular setup of electrodes can show how a sound stimulus
is processed by successive nodes in the auditory processing areas of the
brain. When hooked up to a cat near a metronome, for example, the traces from
different electrodes tracking different auditory processing nodes, will spike
in sequence, like an earthquake wave passing various seismic stations at
different locations on the ground.

The wild thing is that when a mouse is now brought into view of the cat, the
cat's attention becomes so focused that the metronome traces disappear -- the
cat's brain filters them out at such a low level that the cat doesn't just
ignore the metronome, it literally no longer processes the sound at a low
level -- as far as the cat's brain is concerned, the experimenter might as
well have turned off the metronome.

~~~
IAmGraydon
I've often thought that a similar mechanism underlies people forgetting names
right after and introduction. A new introduction creates at least some level
of anxiety in most people (we want to make a good first impression for the
sake of social acceptance), and so we turn our attention inward on ourselves
just like the cat turns its attention on the mouse. The result is that
attention to the outside world is reduced and the name or other details are
forgotten. This holds true for any anxiety-provoking experience. Memory is
severely degraded, to the point of complete black-outs of truly traumatic
experiences. It could also be the mechanism that causes depersonalization-
derealization (DPDR), which is a reaction to anxiety. The sensory experience
of the outside world becomes attenuated and one feels detached from reality.

~~~
stuxnet79
I've had anxiety issues for over a decade and I'm well acquainted with DP/DR.
I'm intrigued by your articulation of why it may be an adaptive trait for
humans. Do you have any references to research that pursues this line of
inquiry?

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cmarschner
What an omission - the paper‘s first author was Dzmitry Bahdanau. How can the
author name only his supervisors?

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40acres
Great article and a very convincing case that modern offices should offer
noise cancelling headphones to employees who are organized with an open floor
plan.

The big question for me is how do you avoid paying attention to your internal
state? Are there findings here that can help those with anxiety problems?

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npsimons
Why not just not have open floor plans?

~~~
lkbm
I assume that's a lot more expensive. It might pay off in increased
productivity, but it's not as simple as "just don't do it". Where I work, I
believe it would be tens of thousands dollars more per month in rent.

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gnicholas
Highly recommend Dehaene's book Reading In The Brain:
[https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science-
Read/dp/014...](https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science-
Read/dp/0143118056)

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skybrian
Lots of things change the shape of our brains and learning that a mechanism
exists doesn't make the effects more significant than before. But despite the
headline, this looks like a solid article about attention mechanisms.

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ranjitkollu
Awareness is everything.

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Reedx
This reminded me of a fun experiment:

You can always see your nose.

And now you'll notice it. But thanks to unconscious selective attention it'll
soon disappear again.

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Krasnol
So can we sue advertising companies now?

~~~
npsimons
> So can we sue advertising companies now?

Naw, we should ban advertising.

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elevenoh
But how could wetware's structure & its function not be tied?

