
The spotlight of attention is more like a strobe, say researchers - daddy_drank
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/08/22/spotlight-attention-more-strobe-say-researchers
======
nabla9
Long time mediators are familiar with this. When you drill down attention to
smaller and smaller time resolution, eventually you notice that attention
flickers.

Buddhist Abhidhamma sutra describes this phenomenon. Smallest flicker of
consciousness is called ceta. I think 250 ms is closer to vithi (kind of small
molecule of mind- moments), than ceta.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abhidharma/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abhidharma/)

> We have seen that the Abhidharma’s analysis of sentient experience reveals
> that what we perceive as a temporally extended, uninterrupted flow of
> phenomena is, in fact, a rapidly occurring sequence of causally connected
> consciousness moments or cittas

...

> The Sarvāstivādins use the term “moment” (kṣaṇa) in a highly technical sense
> as the smallest, definite unit of time that cannot be subdivided, the length
> of which came to be equated with the duration of mental events as the
> briefest conceivable entities. There is no Sarvāstivādin consensus on the
> length of a moment, but the texts indicate figures between 0.13 and 13
> milliseconds in modern terms

(My personal subjective estimate is something like to 40 ms)

~~~
xelxebar
Oh wow! I just recently stumbled on this in my personal meditation practice. I
noticed that it's almost like there's a game loop that periodically hits the
CartesianSelfAssertion function. Or something. Everyone I've tried to talk to
so far has just given blank stares, so it's kind to nice to run across someone
with similar experience. Thanks for sharing.

~~~
justinpombrio
> I noticed that it's almost like there's a game loop that periodically hits
> the CartesianSelfAssertion function. Or something.

Could you go into a bit more detail? What does CartesianSelfAssertion feel
like? How often is it called---on the order of 40ms per OP, or less
frequently? Do you notice this only during/after meditation?

~~~
xelxebar
> Could you go into a bit more detail?

I'm not super lucid on it yet. Just recently encountered the experience and
still getting a feel for what it is, but I'll try to share what I can.

> What does CartesianSelfAssertion feel like?

A bit disorienting, actually. Though that could just be a function of it's
current novelty for me. It has aspects of feeling like waking up, or
remembering something crucial, or turning a corner and finally finding your
keys.

To philosiphize a bit, I'm tempted to say it's like recurively having a
realization, "Oh! _This_ is the real deal... Oh wait, that was just a dream,
THIS is the real deal... Wait, no, _THIS_ is it..." which seems quite utterly
silly.

And completely independent of all that, I also feel like I'm spinning
clockwise, or at least at the center of some spinning thought-sensation storm.
And the angle of 30 degrees is in the mix as well for some reason. I have no
idea what to make of either of these.

Then there's also a part of me that wonders if all the above is just nonsense,
because it just sounds so tripped out. lol

> How often is it called---on the order of 40ms per OP, or less frequently?

Honestly, timing the interval never really occurred to me until reading the
OP's comment. In my limited experience, there's definitely some bit of
flexibility. In extreme cases I've even been able to halt the process
altogether for tens of seconds or so, but modulo doing weird stuff, my gut
feeling is to say somewhere on the order of 100ms---40ms definitely doesn't
clash with my experience.

> Do you notice this only during/after meditation?

It's been most blatant in some of my more recent meditation sessions. Durning
the normal course of the day it's mostly way in the background, though I can
also sort of "consciously access" that awareness space to some level. Though
the mathematician in me feels like "conscious access of sub-awareness
processes" should be a contradiction.

~~~
ddingus
The spinning at an angle is very likely you reaching self awareness with
enough fidelity to become aware of your own inner ear noise floor.

Like being in a silent room eventually relaxes your ear muscles and lack of
other stimulation will bring out whatever birdies, tones, noise in your
hearing, no movement and concentration can bring out same in your inner ear.

As we age, these artifacts tend to accumulate.

Happens in eyes too, but manifests a bit differently. What happens there is we
need more photons to register the same sensory brightness levels. When we are
in the dark for a while, the retinal noise floor can be more easily seen, like
when star gazing.

Secondly, blood flow, other things can be seen in that noise floor. That
happens better in consistent, lower light, but not dark environments, in my
experience.

All of these are normally filtered in much the same way we filter our nose out
of our visual field, unless we concentrate awareness there.

How do I know?

Well, we know nothing. But, my experiences come from three things:

I have a very good sensory recall. I know what it used to sound, hear, feel
like with high fidelity.

My own meditative activities.

Some built in degree of self awareness. When I relax a bit, those filters come
down fairly easily for me. Have always been that way and was confused by it
more than once growing up.

------
pdkl95
To see the "spotlight of attention" _masterfully_ exploited, I recommend
Apollo Robbins[1]. Yes, his slight of hand is very impressive, but his act is
fundamentally about how he fills up your attention input buffer, notices where
you are allocating your "attention spotlight", and works _with a blatant
flourish_ just outside of that spotlight.

The overlap with "walk in _with confidence_ holding a clipboard" approah to
security is obvious; Apollo Robbins has even given a talk at DEFCON[2] about
the implications of this approach to attention & security.

I find his demonstrations a _very_ humbling lesson in just how weak our actual
perception of reality really is.

[1] [https://video.newyorker.com/watch/apollo-robbins-tricks-
of-t...](https://video.newyorker.com/watch/apollo-robbins-tricks-of-the-trade)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kkOKvPrdZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kkOKvPrdZ4)

~~~
aerique
Ooh that's nice, thank you.

I recently figured out that keeping two separate items in one hand, say my
bicycle keys and my house keys, makes it easier for me to lose one of them
without realizing it since I'm still feeling the other. So there's no sense of
loss.

------
vankessel
I am curious if this has any relation to saccades. It feels to me like it
would be easier to retain attention on a moving object than a stationary one.

Not substantial but found this in a quick search of any support for this
conjecture:
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0004953760825526...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049537608255262)

------
ilovecaching
Our perception of reality is just a bunch of hacks, God is a programmer with a
deadline confirmed.

In all seriousness, it's interesting to think about the design tradeoffs
evolution came up with for humans, and how those tradeoffs may no longer be
the right tradeoffs given our radically changed lifestyles. If only we could
flick focus mode like a switch when sitting at a computer, that would be
nifty.

~~~
gnode
> If only we could flick focus mode like a switch when sitting at a computer,
> that would be nifty.

But you do. When you engage in a task, the dopamine and noradrenaline systems
in your brain modulate which parts are active, directing your attention. If
these systems don't work well enough, then you get ADHD.

If what you mean is to be able to disable involuntary attention control, then
that's not good either. You'd be at great risk of under-responding to emerging
situations.

------
yosito
Plot twist: the human brain is actually running JavaScript and attention is
executed on each tick of the event loop.

------
fromthestart
The article is paywalled, but it looks like the concept of flow was not
considered in the human study conducted by the authors, judging only by the
short summary of the paper.

I suspect this changes under conditions of flow, where a human can spend hours
engrossed in one task and totally lose track of his surroundings.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
_Flow_ as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.¹

It would be interesting to see if experimental results differ between when a
person is in flow-state and when they are not.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi#Flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi#Flow)

------
cs702
Makes me wonder if there might be any advantages to modulating Softmax
attention in deep artificial neural nets, with some kind of mechanism for
recomputing attention based on each previous attention.

~~~
ctoth
I came here hoping to read this. I'm not clever enough to implement it, but my
first thought was that someone would see a connection here.

------
rolltopdesk
They say this flicker likely provides an evolutionary advantage-a chance to
switch attention. I wonder if it’s optional. Wonder also about cases like
attention disorders and attention of autistics.

~~~
gnode
Attention deficit disorders are known to be caused primarily by problems with
neurotransmitter systems which modulate attention (e.g. dopamine and
noradrenaline). This seems to be more like a clock signal for the brain.

I imagine problems with this system would manifest more as Sensory Processing
Disorder, which has differences noticeable in an EEG.

------
newhere420
Could this be in any way related to the strobing effects (and afterimages /
discrete tracers) of LSD and other psychedelics?

(see also [http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/The-Control-
Interr...](http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/The-Control-Interrupt-
Model-of-Psychedelic-Action) \- not sure how much of it is just pseudoscience
nonsense though)

------
social_quotient
“Every 250 milliseconds, you have an opportunity to switch attention,” said
Ian Fiebelkorn,

Really makes you rethink the speed of website load time. I know there is a ton
of research around site abandonment after x seconds (ms in some cases) but
I’ve tended to think drop rates were because the time spent was the upper
bound of what that user would spend of “continuous” attention. Reading this
article it makes me think that if the site takes 4 seconds to load, the user
had about 16 opportunities to go do something else. While the abandonment
outcomes are what they are, the cause seems to be very different than what I
had always thought.

~~~
gnode
I think it's also important to note that when looking at a blank screen there
is nothing stimulating, and stimulation (external or internal) drives our
attention control. Putting a progress indicator on something gives us
something to pay attention to, and so we're more likely to respond with
frustration than inattention.

------
ericsoderstrom
Sounds like a timer interrupt invoking a scheduler. Interesting!

------
chiefalchemist
Given my (anecdotal) experience with audio books, I'd have to agree. I tried
listen to mostly non-fiction in the car while on the highway (read: not local
traffic) and despite the fact it was only me and the road I found myself
fading in and out so often that I stop listening and went back to reading.

Since, I've heard / read that setting play back to a faster speed helps -
because of the novelty? - but I haven't tried it myself.

------
grigjd3
The first time I heard the spotlight analogy from a neuroscientist, I asked
for what backs this up and the response I got was, "it's been shown" with a
tone that made it clear no argument or discussion was allowed. Later I found
out it comes from some behavioral studies that are pretty contrived.

------
PavlikPaja
I think I experience the opposite, focusing on nothing in particular and only
occasional brief flashes of focus, when I need to focus on something. Are
people really more or less unaware of what is going on around them all the
time?

------
techbio
Support for
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwave_entrainment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwave_entrainment)
?

------
madeuptempacct
I don't really understand any practical consequences of this.

~~~
justinpombrio
Apparently there aren't many: no one (except perhaps a few buddhists who spent
an unreasonable amount of time meditating) noticed until now. The interesting
bit is that we _don 't_ notice.

~~~
partingshots
The finding highlights and perhaps provides somewhat of a meaningful answer to
philosophical arguments around what we perceive to be reality around us in
fact being very much an illusion of continuity. The fact that we so readily
trick ourselves into believing, and only through intense
mindfulness/introspection are we able to contradict that sense of internal
consistency, is quite profound in my opinion.

------
winchling
Is the attention spotlight synchronised with the brain's theta waves?

~~~
dr_dshiv
I saw a researcher present a model of theta as a siren light (vs strobe), that
moves from the back of the brain to the front, in an oscillatory loop. Where
theta is active, the whole of attention is integrating with the local input of
the part. As a general principle, we look for "phase amplitude coupling" to
describe the integration of fast (gamma) local oscillations with slower
(theta) global oscillations.

Another well established oscillatory model describes binding in visual
perception -- which is based on the synchronization of 40hz inhibitory
interneurons in different parts of the visual field. Different parts of the
same object have a synchronized inhibitory input. Theory is called "binding by
inhibition gating" or " communication through coherence"

