Quotes About Attention

Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport, or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.

The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second.

Understanding how the brain's attentional and memory systems interact can go a long way toward minimizing memory lapses.

We all want to believe that we can do many things at once and that our attention is infinite, but this is a persistent myth.

Multitasking is the enemy of a focused attentional system. Increasingly, we demand that our attentional system try to focus on several things at once, something that it was not evolved to do.

Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task. And the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We've literally depleted the nutrients in our brain. This leads to compromises in both cognitive and physical performance.

Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting, and at the same time, we are all doing more. Consequently

Two of the most crucial principles used by the attentional filter are change and importance

A reliable way to treat hemispatial neglect is through the use of prismatic glasses that gradually shift the patient's attention toward the side that is neglected.

Following a stroke, nearly one-third of people experience hemispatial neglect, also known as unilateral neglect. This causes the stroke survivor to ignore one side of their body or visual field and to be unaware that they have a deficit. As you can imagine, it is a leading cause of falls and other injuries. A reliable way to treat hemispatial neglect is through the use of prismatic glasses that gradually shift the patient's attention toward the side that is neglected.

Mindfulness has never met a cognition it didn't like.

Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows.

Mindfulness is a form of mental activity that trains the mind to become aware of awareness itself and to pay attention to one's own intention.

One of the key practical lessons of modern neuroscience is that the power to direct our attention has within it the power to shape our brain's firing patterns, as well as the power to shape the architecture of the brain itself.

not all encounters with the world affect the mind equally. Studies have demonstrated that if the brain appraises an event as "meaningful," it will be more likely to be recalled in the future.

Connection means that we give our kids our attention, that we respect them enough to listen to them, that we value their contribution to problem solving, and that we communicate to them that we're on their side—whether we like the way they're acting or not.

Mental presence is a state of being wide awake and receptive to what is happening, as it is happening in the moment, within us and between the world and us. Presence cultivates happiness.

Simply put, reactivity cuts off seeing clearly.

Remember, there are plenty of ways to spoil children—by giving them too many things, by rescuing them from every challenge, by never allowing them to deal with defeat and disappointment—but we can never spoil them by giving them too much of our love and attention. That's what the connection

Having an awakened mind means using the mental processes of attention, awareness, and intention to activate new states of mind that, with repeated practice, can become intentionally sculpted traits in a person's life.

Attunement requires presence but is a process of focused attention and clear perception. We

what you do and don't value, and what you do and don't give attention to, will impact who your child becomes.

Instead of just reacting to the external actions, you are focusing your attention on what her inner world may be like—red, green, or blue—and communicating to that internal state of your child.

the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment" (Kabat-Zinn,