Wiki: Attention

Credit: Nature Neuroscience. The figure, from an accompanying review by Hedden and Gabrieli indicates some of the cortical regions associated with focused and lapsed attention. The arrows indicate reciprocal functional connections between prefrontal and parietal regions, and top-down modulation of occipital sensory regions by the prefrontal cortex. IFG, right inferior frontal gyrus; TPJ, temporal-parietal junction.

Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Attention has also been referred to as the allocation of processing resources.

Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Attention remains a major area of investigation within education, psychology and neuroscience. Areas of active investigation involve determining the source of the signals that generate attention, the effects of these signals on the tuning properties of sensory neurons, and the relationship between attention and other cognitive processes like working memory and vigilance. A relatively new body of research is investigating the phenomenon of traumatic brain injuries and their effects on attention.

For more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention

Gifted and Talented: Bucky Fuller

Excerpted from the current popular neuroscience book I'm reading, A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain, by the great John J. Ratey, M. D.

"The development of personality itself is firmly rooted in the sensory apparatus. Even people with extraordinary perceptual abilities often exist in a love/hate relationship with their gifts, because it can be alienating to "see" the world differently than most people. Yet that different view is the defining characteristic of any great artist - indeed, the characteristic that makes each of us unique. The great American architect Buckminster Fuller, perhaps best known for his creation of the geodesic dome, often felt tremendously overloaded by visual stimulation. He would routinely wear glasses that allowed only part of the visual spectrum to enter his eyes, and when he put them on he found it easier to think. When out on a building site or out for a stroll in the city, he would wear earplugs because the noise left him unable to deal with the world.

Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller (1895-1983) was an American systems theorist, architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.
Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.