Post details: Neuroscience: The importance of focused attention

10/14/09

Permalinkby 02:14:31 am, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, 277 words   English (CA)

Neuroscience: The importance of focused attention

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In the Huffington Post, Rick Smith (October 9, 2009) notes

In a 2005 article for the United Kingdom's Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, physicist Henry Stapp and psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz showed that sustained concentrated attention on any particular mental experience-a thought, an insight, an image, even a fear-not only kept the brain circuitry involved open and alive but also eventually produced physical changes in the brain's structure. In effect, by increasing attention, you are creating brain architecture specifically suited to the challenges before you. Little wonder, then, that performance should grow dramatically.
Schwartz is the lead author of The Mind and the Brain, which sets forth this thesis in more detail. Basically, our minds become what we focus attention on, and this can be good or bad for us, depending on what that is.

Meanwhile, this Dark Age blog post (October 11 2009) mentions both Mario Beauregard, the third author of the 2005 paper and yours truly as well.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack

Neurolaw: Mind readers bustle into the court room

Mind and society: Why you can trust the people, when they have a chance

Neuroscience: Stuff I didn't need to hear about what people care about, but pass along anyway

Atheism and pop culture: Religious commitment as mild dementia?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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