Does the Brain Filter out a Wider Awareness?

The human brain has amazing capacities. It contains billions of neurons, allowing it to process vast quantities of information so that we can function effectively. But can we have too much information? Yes, and, in fact, filtering information is one of the brain's most important functions. Brain filtering is an adaptive strategy and ensures that only the information relevant to our goals is allowed into our consciousness. This keeps us from being flooded with irrelevancies that might distract us. To introduce brain filtering to my neuroscience students, I show them a video of two teams throwing a ball back and forth, and instruct them to track how many times each team gets the ball. After the students give their answers, I ask if they noticed anything unusual during the video. Typically, they say no. I then tell them a man in a gorilla costume walked across the court during the play. When they watch the video again, they see the gorilla. This is a classical case of the brain filtering out information (the gorilla) irrelevant to the task (counting). Filtering of information through the attentional pathways of our brain was brought to wide acceptance in the 1950s through the work of psychologist Donald Broadbent. There is still debate regarding where in the brain this filtering takes place, but it is known that the two sides of the brain filter information differently. The left controls information important for language abilities and goal-directed actions. The right contro...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news