The Neuropsychobiology of Focus & Attention
Understand how much of Focus and Attention are driven by biology and neurology.
Want the attentive vigilance of the Samurai?
How about the indestructible focus of the Buddhist monk?
There are archetypal images of attention and focus. Like the attentive vigilance of the Samurai, or the focus of a Buddhist monk.
When these are lacking, it's surely become or has been painted, as a character and personality deficit. Especially considering the amount of learning and attention disorders that keep being ascribed to people.
We're already confronted with the implications of identity and personality in any conversation about attention and focus, let alone creativity, not to mention what a “disorder” label added to this does to our identification process.
Focus and attention also don't appear out of nowhere.
It's based on biological parameters. One of these major elements is Acetylcholine (Ach), the neurotransmitter of learning, attention, and memory. Ach is produced by acetyl coenzyme A (which is synthesized from glucose) and choline.
Now we need to add the neurobiological context: there are bio-individual elements genetically, epigenetically, environmentally and alterations due to experiences (whether old or recent).
Meaning, as usual, every person has a certain deposition towards Ach baseline, sensitivity, production, reuptake, and breakdown. Beyond the bio-individual elements, there's a quite common resource issue. Simply put, most people don't nearly eat enough choline.
Considering choline is found in animal products primarily, and they have been largely demonized, it's not hard to put two and two together.
Imagine taking the batteries out of your remote, and being surprised that your remote doesn't work. Same principle.
Neurons that release Acetylcholine are driven by both reward and punishment. As usual, neurotransmitters are highly interlinked, in the case of Ach, dopamine is also involved.
The presence of Ach in a particular brain area tells it to change, but it doesn't tell it how to change. In other words, when these neurons are active, they increase plasticity in the target areas.
Ach broadcasts wildly throughout the brain and as a result, can trigger changes of any kind of relevant stimulus. It is a universal mechanism of saying "This is important, get better at detecting this”.
The basis of behavioral improvement is then not simply the repeated performance of a task, it also requires neuromodulatory systems that encode for relevance.
So while Ach turns on plasticity, dopamine is involved in the direction of change, encoding whether something is rewarding or punishing.
Acetylcholine is also the key neurotransmitter for memory. Which has an obvious interconnectedness and interdependence with relevance and reward.
If we connect the dots here:
Low acetylcholine and messed up dopamine circuits are not a recipe for focus or attention. The behavioral implication, and thus the co-identification implication is even more glaring. It means that behavioral change is hampered by a deficit in Ach.
Your value circuits in the Orbital Frontal Cortex are largely Ach-dependent, which also interconnect with your reward circuits. So even if Ach is not in deficit, depending on the person's reward (and attachment) circuits they're liable to get hijacked by dopamine.
Relevance is marked by an increase of territory in the brain, meaning if it is important and relevant, it will literally take up more neuronal space.
Think of this in terms of identity: the more you do the same thing, as in repeating the same behavioral patterns, the more this solidifies in the brain, but also and mainly as your sense and perception of identity.
The brain works with various speeds per region. Meaning there are faster layers and slower layers. The slower layer provides checks and structures for the fast layers.
Without these checks and balances your identity and aspects would change so fast that you'd be unable to form a consistent sense of Self (“object” constancy).
The degree of plasticity in the brain regions reflects how much its data change or are likely to change in the outside world. If the incoming data are unwavering the system hardens around them, think back to your behavioral patterns.
If the data are constantly changing, the system remains flexible, this flexibility is limited to fast layers, to make sure your brain doesn't melt when faced with high novelty. As a result, stable data has to be solidified first. Stable data is dominant data, the more you do the same thing, the more you need to solidify this data.
This is why certain personality and identifications tend to stick to you, and why certain modes, behavioral patterns, self-perceptions, and beliefs are so "sticky" or hard to change.
This also means that the solidification of memory, of Self, and identity, is thus distributed widely over titanic numbers of neurons, synapses, molecules, and genes.
That's why deep change takes time, attention, consistency (emphasis), and effort. It takes attention, curiosity, patience, and dedication. Some of these faster layers can be changed fast, those slower layers are going to keep being an anchor if attention isn't directed that way.
Of course, access to these deeper and slower layers is state-dependent, which is why making sure you're biology and neurology are on point will matter a lot.
That means your sense of self is distributed over the brain but also partially memory-based. As we saw, Ach projects over the entire brain, and memory is stored in different places across the brain, also encoded with emotion.
Furthermore, information and Sense of self-state and associative, meaning that we can lose access to aspects of personality, not because of memory but because of the effects of stress on the brain.
Which creates a type of paradoxical hell: knowing your Self in a way but not having access to it. The brain adjusts itself according to what you spend your time on, as long as those tasks have alignment with rewards or goals, this extends to identity (who you think you are, or want to become), your values, virtues, morals, and principles.
That essentially means there is an entire internal map built around reward relevance. Attention (and focus) are like high-resolution sensors we can turn to a problem and figure out how to incorporate it into our model.
The brain is also a "prediction machine", that is the driving engine behind constant self-configuration. By modeling the state of the world, the brain reshapes itself to have good expectations and therefore to be maximally sensitive to the unexpected.
It also predicts how patterns and behaviors map to this projected Self into the future and constantly checks if we're measuring up to this (dopamine and dynorphin)
Let's summarize:
The more you are exposed to something, the more the brain adjusts to it. The more dominant the information is, the deeper it sinks. Relevance and reward are tied together, which also includes prediction.
Imagine what happens if there are holes in the model of Self? What happens when in that internal map we value destructive things?
That's why it's important to understand the interconnectedness and interdependence of neurotransmitters.
Addiction is a reciprocal narrowing: you adapt to the stimulus, and need a bigger one, relevance and salience landscape narrows, you lose enjoyment (dopamine and serotonin) from natural sources (or spiritual ones), also narrowing prediction of reward whilst overattributing value (which is reward narrowing as well).
The value and reward keep narrowing.
This should highlight the importance of co-identification and how we determine personality issues and even attention disorders and deficits (in terms of identity).
When we add the layered workings of speeds per region, we can see how changing deeper aspects of Self and identity takes so much time.
These behaviors, perceptions, rewards, and valuation have seeped into the deeper layers, which is why consistency is such a big thing.
The brain and body for the sake of efficiency work with set points, only a new dominant information, proven by time and effort (consistency) to be dominant will change these setpoints and deeper layers.
Furthermore, there are neurological changes and relevance changes that happen from maturation and experience.
An illustration of this is a value shift in your 30s towards connection (a rather common change/amplification of attachment circuits) and the changes in dopamine/GABA levels.
You stop valuing and caring about what you did in your 20s (typically). Ergo you stop caring about certain things and start caring about others.
Your salience and relevance landscape has changed. Another illustration of this is becoming a parent, a great example of how identity changes with that experience of relevance (relevance to others and how this changes the sense of Self).
Additionally, there are moments of awe and wonder that inspire insight and realization which causes a change in salience landscape and relevance.
These insights and realization also change the reticular activation system, meaning the spotlight of attention changes.
That also means the filter and lenses change with it. This extends even further when you've had moments of clarity, meaning, and purpose, of a "reality beyond this one". And you actively start creating said reality here.
This is the nature of vision. With it, your salience landscape narrows but deepens. We could also see it as the inception of purpose and meaning.
Purpose and meaning present themselves as salience, relevance, interest, pull, and calling.
This is mediated and directed by acetylcholine in the brain. Adding trauma psychology in terms of identity and personality also becomes important here. Because typically people with a trauma background will mindfuck themselves out of the importance of their signals.
They will demean it in the same their primary caretakers demean and trivialize it.
They have low self-trust and low self-authorization, because these pulls, interests, relevance, and curiosity have never been validated, or even worse metaphorically and/or literally been beaten out of them.
Trauma and wounding early on alters focus and attention circuits, and also by necessity shifts this to a survival paradigm.
As needs aren't being met, the relevance, focus, and attention change to survival state coping and manipulating the world to get needs met.
Often people with these backgrounds have a hard time with focus and attention because of altered stress (HPA axis) and amygdala, circuits, and wiring.
To add insult to injury, they have rarely had the chance to explore what their natural proclivities or inclinations are, because they've typically known nothing else but a survival state.
This also means they, on average, have a hard time tapping in or connecting to what is purposeful or meaningful to them on a deeper level.
What's the point?
Attention and focus are far more than skills. So if you want Buddhist monk or Samurai levels of them you're going to have to check a few boxes first.
If the raw materials are lacking and there are alterations in the circuits, wiring, and neuromodulation you'll have a hard time tapping into that.
This is why co-identification with these traits is, as usual, a double-edged blade.
In favorable circumstances, and fulfilling the parameters for focus and attention to emerge, they will regardless of personality.
Your bio-individual predisposition to acetylcholine will determine a lot in terms of processing speed, learning, adaptability, creativity, memory, intelligence (in terms of general problem-solving width and depth), and pattern recognition.
Regardless of your level of Ach, the main takeaway is this:
Relevance is adaptive. If you start the process of differentiation, pulling apart your character structure is like a mechanic pulling apart an engine.
By looking at your identity, personality, character, beliefs, narratives, values, virtues, principles, and filters you're going to have the possibility to rewire the reward circuits.
Because this means you can shift more and more of the reward to internally generated rewards.
You can build a vision of self that determines the reward of the current self, its predictive model, and helps upgrade the internal map of your Self.
Ironically, this requires a sense of curiosity, as the differentiation relies on asking yourself questions about every aspect or part of your Self.