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NeuronUP. Web platform of cognitive rehabilitation
The following is a brief anatomical basis of attention. We are not looking for an exhaustive bibliographical or theoretical exhaustiveness of the concept, only a brief exposition of the main nodes involved in the attentional process, and how they do it. We will start from Posner’s model (which is the most widely accepted) and implement …
What is attention? Attention is a basic, multidimensional cognitive ability, essential for information processing[1]. On the one hand, it is considered basic because it is essential for the correct functioning of higher-order psychological processes such as learning, by receiving, selecting and assimilating/interpreting stimuli that will later be encoded and stored in an organized manner in …
How many times have you gone to the fridge or the closet looking for something specific, and even though you had what you were looking for right in front of you, you didn’t see it? If this ever happened to you, you were probably surprised to find it where you had not seen it before: …
As already discussed in a previous blog post, the most frequently used theoretical model for the rehabilitation of attention is the clinical model of Sohlberg and Mateer, in which attention is divided hierarchically into five levels, with alternating attention being the fourth level. This means that to efficiently carry out an activity requiring alternating attention, a proper functioning of focused, sustained and selective attention is required1.
Attention is a complex cognitive function that has been researched from several scientific fields—from neuropsychology to cognitive neurosciencevia psychometrics and even electrophysiology. This has resulted in the development of multiple models that attempt to explain this ability from different perspectives. Cognitive neuroscience, for example, attempts to identify those areas of the brain most involved in attentional processes such as the prefrontal cortex and sensory cortex, and subcortical structures such as the optic thalamus, the corpus striatum (the caudatenucleus and the lentiform nucleus), the septal nuclei, the nucleus basalis of Meynert, and the cerebellum.1
We live in a time in which we are swamped with stimuli that make it difficult for us to maintain attention on a task. It is becoming more common to watch a movie while reading the news on the computer and texting on the phone at the same time. We are now used to perform several tasks simultaneously, but do we really pay enough attention to what we are doing? How can we tell when we are dealing with attention problems? Can attention be trained?
What is divided attention? Divided attention is the last and highest level of attention inthe clinical model proposed by Sohlberg and Mateer1, in which different levels of attention are organized in a hierarchical fashion; hence, divided attention isfollowed by alternating, selective, sustainedand focused attention. This level of attention allows us to attend totwo or more …
