Attention occupies a peculiarly central position in the depth-psychology and cognitive-neuroscience corpus assembled here, functioning simultaneously as a neurological mechanism, a phenomenological stance, and a moral orientation toward the world. McGilchrist provides the most philosophically ambitious treatment, arguing that attention is not a neutral cognitive tool but an intrinsically relational 'howness' — a mode of being that constitutes the world it encounters, and that the two cerebral hemispheres enact fundamentally different kinds of attention, with the right hemisphere's global, open attention taking precedence over the left hemisphere's narrowly focused, instrumental gaze. Kandel approaches the term empirically, demonstrating that even ambient attention is necessary for the formation of stable spatial memory maps in the hippocampus, while LeDoux situates attention at the threshold of consciousness, arguing it is necessary but not sufficient for conscious experience. Bleuler's clinical observations connect failures of active attention to the affective impoverishment of schizophrenia, and Janet documents attention's role in restoring hysterical anesthesia. The ADHD literature (Rubia, Lin, Wynchank) treats attention as a dysregulated executive function modulated by catecholamines, prefrontal-parietal networks, and hormonal fluctuations. Across these registers, a persistent tension obtains between attention as selective filter and attention as world-constituting act.
In the library
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attention is inescapably bound up with value — unlike what we conceive as 'cognitive functions', which are neutral in this respect… Attention, however, intrinsically is a way in which, not a thing: it is intrinsically a relationship, not a brute fact.
McGilchrist argues that attention is not a neutral cognitive tool but an ontologically constitutive relationship that brings a world — and a set of values — into being.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
Alertness and sustained attention may have the ring of technical 'functions', just the sort of things it's hard to get excited about outside the psychology lab. But, like vigilance, they are the ground of our being in the world, not only at the lowest, vegetative level, but at the highest, spiritual levels.
McGilchrist elevates alertness and sustained attention from mere technical functions to the existential ground of all human engagement with the world.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
Attention may be necessary but not sufficient for mental state consciousness. Attention does many things. Its most commonly acknowledged task is selection of the information of which we become conscious.
LeDoux positions attention as a necessary but insufficient condition for conscious experience, functioning primarily as the selector of which information reaches working memory.
LeDoux, Joseph, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, 2015thesis
Attention also allows us to bind the various components of a spatial image into a unified whole… we found that even ambient attention is suffici[ent]
Kandel demonstrates experimentally that attention, even in its most basal ambient form, is required for the binding and stabilization of spatial memory maps in the hippocampus.
Kandel, Eric R., In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006thesis
Global attention, courtesy of the right hemisphere, comes first, not just in time, but takes precedence in our sense of what it is we are attending to; it therefore guides the left hemisphere's local attention, rather than the other way about.
McGilchrist establishes a temporal and hierarchical primacy for right-hemisphere global attention over the left hemisphere's local, focused mode.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
I am much taken by Crick and Koch's argument that selective attention is not only essential in its own right but also one of the royal roads to consciousness.
Kandel endorses the view that selective attention is both independently significant and a privileged pathway toward understanding consciousness itself.
Kandel, Eric R., In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
What we attend to, and how we attend to it, changes it and changes us. Seeing is not just 'the most efficient mechanism for acquiring knowledge'… It is also, and before anything else, the main medium by which we enact our relationship with the world.
McGilchrist argues that the manner and object of attention are transformative — reshaping both the perceived world and the perceiving self.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
there is a psychological phenomenon which plays a far more important part than any other, and its study throws a great deal of light upon the problem; we mean attention. To verify this fact, we must remember… that with hystericals attention is altogether the most difficult thing to fix.
Janet identifies attention as the central psychological mechanism in hysterical anesthesia, demonstrating that directing attention to an insensate limb temporarily restores sensation.
Janet, Pierre, The Major Symptoms of Hysteria, 1907thesis
Attention as a partial phenomenon of affectivity… where affect is lacking, there will also be lacking the drive to pursue the external and internal processes, to direct the path of the senses and the thoughts; i.e. active attention will be lacking.
Bleuler links the failure of active attention in schizophrenia directly to affective deficit, establishing attention as dependent upon — and symptomatic of — the underlying state of affect.
Bleuler, Eugen, Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias, 1911thesis
Safe, with nothing in particular commanding our attention, we stroll along, checking out the trees, looking at our neighbor's gardens, smelling the warm air. We orient as our sensory attention is caught for a moment and reorient to the next object of our fleeting interest.
Ogden situates exploratory, volitional attention within the orienting system, linking it to safety and survival rather than threat response.
Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006supporting
hypo-involvement of a fronto-parietal attention network necessary for exerting top-down regulation… Common to all three dysregulated neural circuits are: (1) hyper-involvement of the dACC in the dysfunctional process, and (2) hypo-involvement of a fronto-parietal attention network
Garland identifies a fronto-parietal attention network as the critical mechanism whose under-recruitment underlies addictive dysregulation across multiple neural circuits.
Garland, Eric L., Mindfulness training targets neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction at the attention-appraisal-emotion interface, 2014supporting
heightened attention, working memory capacity and episodic memory in highly dissociative individuals may serve as risk factors for pathological dissociation if coupled with particular traumatic experiences.
Lanius reports the paradoxical finding that enhanced attentional capacity may function as a risk factor for dissociation when combined with trauma exposure.
Lanius, edited by Ruth A, The impact of early life trauma on health and disease the, 2010supporting
four different states of disturbed attention: in the states of internal and external distraction, fatigue, and morning drowsiness on waking… the progression of sound reactions illustrates the increasing disturbance of attention
Jung's word-association experiments use patterned changes in reaction type — particularly sound reactions — as empirical indices of graded attentional disturbance.
Jung, C. G., Experimental Researches, 1904supporting
sensory inflow can be processed outside a person's awareness to a stage sufficient for much of its meaning to be determined. Thereafter it can influence his subsequent behaviour, including his verbal responses, without his being aware of it.
Bowlby draws on dichotic listening research to establish that meaning-processing proceeds beneath attentional awareness, influencing behavior without conscious access.
Bowlby, John, Loss: Sadness and Depression (Attachment and Loss, Volume III), 1980supporting
Undivided attention is particularly communicated by the eyes. A good listener normally keeps eye contact with the person who is speaking.
Miller treats undivided attention as a clinical and relational practice, identifying the gaze as its primary interpersonal vehicle in motivational interviewing.
Miller, William R., Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013aside
practice focusing attention on tastes and smells, especially at mealtime… focus all your attention on your taste and smell. Be mindful of what happens.
Ogden employs deliberately redirected sensory attention as a somatic regulation technique within sensorimotor psychotherapy for trauma.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015aside