💻 🎢 ↔️ Attention! Homo Consciousness. I 🛌🏽 👋🏾 🖖🏿

1. When addiction meets schizophrenia

Psychology as a whole has never flashed among my interests in the past, although I used to be superficially interested in attention issues for a very banal reason - I suffer from a severe form of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD F-90 mcb10 / 6A05 mb11). But the traumatic circumstances associated with the sudden psychiatry of a loved one forced me to plunge into the problem. This resulted in two years of “drug addiction” in psychiatry, psychology, cognitive sciences and neurophysiology. I quickly scored the minimum necessary for decision-making, and the severity of the problem eventually came to naught. But my attention tightly stuck to the grand puzzle of the mental device, and all attempts to tear it away from the object of interest, redirecting to useful activities, remained in vain.

At some point, I decided to stop this madness, starting to return to normal. But when you spend months and years, fascinated by examining a completely useless phenomenon under a microscope, sitting on the ruins of your own life, then internal installations insistently require some kind of realization of these efforts. And I decided to write a short cycle of popular science articles about the work of the human psyche in terms of attention mechanisms.

I spent countless hours talking with voices in the heads of schizophrenics, carried away by the phenomenon of split consciousness, testing their intelligence, speech patterns and attention volume, comparing with speech and the intelligence of the medium. Under a magnifying glass, he examined cognitive impairment in paranoid people, exposing the mechanism of shifting the focus of intellectual attention under the influence of emotions. Compared the nature of thinking in bipolar people in the manic and depressive phases. No less crazy people enriched me observation of drug addicts, their thinking and behavioral patterns in their natural habitat. Hero heroes, consumers of spice, avid eaters of acid - all of them discovered certain characteristics related to the specific effects of psychoactive substances on the neurotransmitter system. Priceless knowledge brought me sleepless nightsconducted in observations of long-term consumers of stimulants for withdrawal symptoms, long burned down their dopamine pathways. In truth, before that I mistakenly connected all the motivational mechanisms of the psyche exclusively with dopamine. Even the degradation of the focus of attention and mental disorders in the early stages of Huntington's rarest chorea did not elude me. My new random friend graciously allows me to unceremoniously satisfy my crazy curiosity without brakes without any benefit to science and humanity (excuse me, the selection is not very good, but Huntington is also lucky for me in a single copy).Even the degradation of the focus of attention and mental disorders in the early stages of Huntington's rarest chorea did not elude me. My new random friend graciously allows me to unceremoniously satisfy my crazy curiosity without brakes without any benefit to science and humanity (excuse me, the selection is not very good, but Huntington is also lucky for me in a single copy).Even the degradation of the focus of attention and mental disorders in the early stages of Huntington's rarest chorea did not elude me. My new random friend graciously allows me to unceremoniously satisfy my crazy curiosity without brakes without any benefit to science and humanity (excuse me, the selection is not very good, but Huntington is also lucky for me in a single copy).

I understand that I should not do this, but should finally grow up and begin to pay attention to more practical things and pressing issues, finally beginning to disassemble the ashes of my life. A thousand of the most urgent cases burn with a blue flame, waiting for such a scarce attention resource for me. Moreover, there is no practical sense in writing articles of similar subjects in the non-core section “Brain” in the backyard of Habr. But I was a “drug addict” from birth, and I have no choice not to be myself and not to do what I am involved in. I’m used to Habr, and I like his audience.

A very curly and flowery Dunning Krueger with an unhealthy reassessment of his competencies and capabilities is characteristic of ADHD. I constantly keep this thought in my head and pass through this filter all my conclusions and generalizations. Although studies show that such knowledge does not eliminate cognitive distortion. In addition, the rare hyperfocal states of ADHD schizoids can generate supervaluable ideas, which are separated from supervalued delirium by a thin red line.

Naturally, I am convinced, within the framework of my own manic cognitive distortions, as if I had collected some unique data in my head and discovered any relationships that had not been noticed before. But, in truth, when you study under a magnifying glass how omnipotent our emotions are and how monstrously they distort our thoughts and our picture of the world, then you learn to exist with this. Emotions can whip over the edge, drawing in the head a fairy-tale image of a “scientist among the baboons” , and the mind is aware that you are a sick psycho who does not go to a psychiatrist, but again gets into work, lowering his life into the toilet.

Neither I nor my psychotherapist could have imagined that a simple cycle of scientifically popular articles would spill over into me a new wave of madness and an extreme degree of mental exhaustion. She would not approve of my innocuous idea to write a short series of light articles about attention mechanisms and maybe make a youtube-vlog about psychotherapy for ADHD people, knowing that instead of normalizing sleep and diet, she would continuously monitor that I at least eat something, if only every day and slept at least four times a week. And she herself will be involved in an experimental test of her patient’s wonderful hypotheses.

The thing is that I am absolutely convinced that a high-quality scientific study should not transmit the author’s dubious hypotheses, but report facts and theories regarding which scientific consensus has been established.

However, psychology remains a very problematic discipline within itself. Like dual images, with a careful look, it appears either as a chimera of psychology with philosophy, sometimes it looks like a completely disintegrated set of disciplines of varying degrees of scientificity, of which there is no consensus between them. The scientific pogrom of the wild delirium of the Freudians and Gestaltists would not cause me the slightest inner difficulty.

The problem turned out to be that, trying to put the puzzle together, I found out over and over that the facts I collected, the observed phenomena and logical conclusions did not agree with the postulates of the most scientific direction in psychology, namely cognitive science, which studies the mechanisms of cognition, attention and memory .

Yes, cognitive science still does not have a consistent model linking consciousness and attention, trying to establish a connection between these two phenomena. Things are so bad that cognitive scientists of the largest caliber are calling philosophy to help, which discourages me with their absurdity. Despite the highest degree of respect, bordering on idol worship, I could probably enter into a polemic with Maria Vyacheslavovna Falikman about what she expects from philosophers and how the scientific cadavre of philosophy can solve at least some problems of consciousness. I have a bad attitude towards modern philosophy and believe that its place is aloof from science. However, my schizophrenia is not thick enough to enter into a dispute with cognitive scientists of such a level without the slightest doubt, and even more so to polemicize with the whole world cognitiveincluding Nobel laureate Daniel Kahnemann, regarding attention mechanisms. But time after time, trying to put together a puzzle of my own observations described in scientific publications of facts and research results of cognitive scientists, psychiatrists and neurophysiologists, I got a picture that is different from the point of view relevant in science.

Well, who else should understand — if you are not a professional scientist, but a stubborn enthusiast with mental disabilities, then it’s better not to build extraordinary hypotheses that are different from the opinions of profile scientists of the first magnitude and Nobel laureates. My experience dictates to me to refrain from extraordinary statements that are not supported by extraordinary evidence. Such statements are usually a manifestation of stupidity, the Dunning-Krueger effect or schizophrenia, or all three factors at once.

I am not a scientist, and I will never be one again at my age and with my problems. Even in sick fantasies, I do not pretend to be a scientific revolution and do not expect to shock the world with the special theory of relativity published in Odnoklassniki.

Least of all I would like to be like violent lunatics who sandal long sheets of schizoid delirium, running into a live journal, social networks and from time to time on Habr to refute all world science, proving on fingers that Einstein is a stupid freemason, UTO is not true, but luminiferous ether brings us all free energy.

Writing such long texts with my extreme lack of attention is fraught with extreme stress, and I don’t smile at all that the result of these extra-efforts was nonsense and aphasia, which have no intellectual value.

Nevertheless, no matter how much I reassemble the puzzle, bringing myself to the utmost exhaustion, I got a picture different from the scientific consensus in cognitive science.

As much as I would not like, I have no reason to consider myself smarter than the entire world scientific community. And even more so, it would not occur to me to convince you of this. Therefore, you should keep in mind that the entire series can be nothing more than the debut of my schizophrenia.

In the first part I will be stingy with links and only outline my vision and current scientific point of view when they will not coincide. Just so that you understand where I describe the facts, and where my probably unhealthy fantasies begin. Otherwise, we will drown in the material immediately. In the future, I will try to increase the volume of references to scientific publications, moving from general to particular.

2. Conscious and unconscious

2.1 The border between black and white hides an infinite number of shades of gray

Modern scientific fields of psychology and cognitive sciences often prefer to avoid the terms “conscious and unconscious”, as they are strongly associated with Freudian nonsense. Instead, definitions are realized processes and unconscious ones . But, frankly, this terminology does not seem to me to be valid at all.

As soon as we try to establish where the conscious ends and the unconscious begins, we immediately encounter such quantum uncertainty that we no longer have cats. In reality, there is no clear boundary between the conscious processes and the unconscious.

Thoughts, emotions, sensory information ... Some are in the center of our attention, others are on the periphery and are poorly recognized. Still others are completely unconscious until they receive enough amplification to be in the center of the focus of attention, becoming clearly aware.

The heartbeat, for example, is usually not noticed by us, however, it can become a weakly conscious sensation, say after an intense run, if you stop “listening” to your body. But it can break into the very center of our experiences during a panic attack, becoming clearly aware. Heart beats! Now I will die in horror!

When it comes to conscious and unconscious processes, in my opinion it would be more correct to talk about the processes that are in the focus of attention, on the periphery or outside of it (focus).

Perhaps this is the case about which it is customary to say: “When the hammer is in your hands, all problems seem to be nails”, well, or this joke about the abyss that begins to look at you if you look into it for too long.

2.2 The more violently we track the mind, the more clearly we realize that a person lives life without regaining consciousness

With a frequency of almost once a month, publications pop up in my news feed that another researcher found the very place in the brain where the Architect sits, and the center of consciousness is finally revealed! According to eyewitnesses, most often the architect hides in the prefrontal cortex. In this gambling hunt for consciousness, its traces are found either in the dorsolateral or in the orbitofrontal. Others claim that they found traces of it in mirror neurons, others authoritatively state that the Architect sits completely in the brain stem, the fourth point to the hippocampus, and the fifth ... Well, you understand.

Most often, such articles refer, of course, to the fact that "the scientist raped the journalist." Modern cognitive psychology does not have a unified theory of consciousness, as well as a unified theory of attention. But in general, scientific consensus has already developed - there is no single center of consciousness, nor a center of attention. These are distributed processes that cover the entire nervous system without exception, including the peripheral.

Since the time of the Libet experiment and thanks to its innumerable modern variations, we know that the brain decides to take an action about 200 milliseconds before it becomes our conscious willful decision. Surely, if you are interested in the work of consciousness, you have heard about these 200 milliseconds of free willwhen you can still ban the behavioral exit. But, you see what’s the matter, in the experiment the subjects knew about what they intend to do. And in everyday life, we do not focus on each of our actions. We execute almost all the usual behavioral models automatically, and most often they slip around the periphery of your attention, that is, they are poorly recognized. I wrote YOUR attention because the focus of attention of people with ADHD is much narrower. On behavior this is reflected in many aspects. We all lose by unconsciously stuffing car keys in the refrigerator, forgetting obligations, breaking plans, etc. The most noticeable external symptom is manipulative activity. Our hands live on their own, so all my friends hide their phones and remove valuables from the table when I visit them.I don’t realize my actions when I grab objects, start twisting them and disassembling other people's phones. With a severe pathology, such as mine, poorly controlled is not onlymanipulation , but also locomotion. During a lively conversation, if I get carried away and start looking for something, I unconsciously jump up and begin to intensively walk around the room, which in some situations does not look quite adequate. So you have 200 milliseconds to audit only those actions that are provided with a sufficient level of attention. Well, what is controlled by people like me is generally an open question. The trouble with ADHD-shnikov is that it is impossible to concentrate on literally every action you take, which means that the keys and documents will be lost again, and the phone will once again be sunk in the toilet. But for the sake of narcissism, I did not mention attention deficit disorder. The thing is that ADHD-people are ideal material for studying many aspects of consciousness. Because, say, aphasia and fragmentation of thinking, which can be observed in patients with severe forms of schizophrenia,clearly demonstrate the final result of the collapse of consciousness, but are a complex phenomenon for an inexperienced researcher. By their example, ADHD people can look at psychological reactions and patterns that are quite natural for normal people through a magnifying glass.

For example, most of you know that when you are engaged in some fascinating and truly interesting business, you practically do not feel hunger. It is common for ADHD people to not notice a feeling of hunger for a very long time, being carried away by some terribly exciting activities. This is usually antisocial behavior. And upon termination, suddenly suddenly discover a brutal hunger that has long exceeded the threshold of simple discomfort. All popular explanations for this phenomenon come down to the dopamine suppression of the center of hunger, which is taking place, but whose value is greatly exaggerated. You see, dopamine reuptake is not a very fast process. And the feeling of hunger after the cessation of fascinating activity in hyperactive people does not increase over the next forty minutes, but is detected suddenly and immediately as very intense.That is, the ventrolateral hypothalamic nucleus has already cut off an alarm for a long time, and the siren, without ceasing, has been yelling for several hours, just the psyche did not notice it.

Or another example, probably familiar to each of you. Say you play soccer and suddenly pulled your leg. But you are in a good mood, you are on the beat, your team is winning and you are so passionate that you continue to play, not paying attention to the pain. And only on the way home do you realize how damn that sore leg hurts. You literally hobble to the porch and wonder how you ran another half-time. But parents of hyperactive children and adolescents note the phenomenon when, after street games, the child returns home with a hematoma, and I’m not talking about a slight bruise or abrasion, while he cannot say in which situation he was injured and even roughly indicate the point in time at which it is happened. The pain signal simply went unnoticed for a long time. Although in extreme situations, absorbing all available attention, for example,during an intense battle, a normal person may not immediately notice a wound. Popular literature reduces everything to adrenaline and norepinephrine, which do not explain anything by themselves. I could inject you epinephrine with amphetamine intravenously, simulating the adrenal reaction of the body. This would help you not to lose consciousness from the pain shock, but would not have eased your pain in the least, if I had begun to torture you in the dentist's chair. Endorphins, which some of you may recall, cannot fully explain the picture.but it wouldn’t ease your pain at all, if I had begun to torture you in the dentist’s chair. Endorphins, which some of you may recall, cannot fully explain the picture.but it wouldn’t ease your pain at all, if I had begun to torture you in the dentist’s chair. Endorphins, which some of you may recall, cannot fully explain the picture.

Surely even those who did not read the book by Daniel Kahneman “Think slowly, decide quickly”, heard his very unfortunate in my opinion metaphor about the two systems of our brain. One fast, but not exact, which is often mistaken, the other slow, energy-consuming, but more intelligent. Moreover, all attempts to find the place where this second system is located are doomed to failure. Wherever you poke your brain with an electrode - the first is everywhere. But the second system seems to have huge computing power! So where is it located?

Naturally, we have no second system. This is just a Kahneman metaphor implying attention. Concentration of attention, indeed, in some cases, the process is slow and costly. But our attention is not the second system working on the principle of on / off, but a quantitative parameter. Sounding the wrong answer to the well-known problem about the bat, you were not completely unconscious if you heard / read the question and understood the condition. That is, both the condition of the problem and your answer all the same passed at least along the periphery of your attention (they were realized, if it is more clear to you). Just a little attention was paid to this problem (unless, of course, you solved it correctly).

I’m sure that most of you would have mastered this puzzle if you hadn’t heard it from a friend or read it in a book, lying on the couch, but if you got it at an interview in Google. Why am I so sure? Because, going to an interview, you, firstly, would be extremely focused. Secondly, they would expect a trick question. And thirdly, before giving an answer, they would do a check and immediately find that the intuitive answer of one dollar for a bat and ten cents for a ball is incorrect and violates the condition of the problem.

We find something better if we know that there is something. And even better is to discover this if we know what exactly we are looking for.

Therefore, some of you received an assignment at the interview like: “if a bat and a ball together cost a dollar and a dime, and a bat costs a dollar, how much does the ball cost?”, You would experience a short confusion. It might even have been written in the mind in the form of an equation, and before giving an answer, they would have done several verification cycles, making sure that they understood the question correctly. That's because the complexity of the test task would radically contradict the expectation. The most suspicious of you would have examined the bright room three times, in search of a white cat that is not there, being sure that the cat simply must be. In the case of the above example, the question would be resolved quickly thanks to unambiguous mathematical logic. But in everyday life, being beyond the limits of formal logic, we tend to falsely detect not only missing cats,but also the most diverse game. Sometimes the hairy hand of the State Department, which seems to be in darkness, is far from the most exotic bug.

I do not like the terms “conscious and unconscious” not only because of what Freudianism brings from them, but primarily because of their inaccuracy. As I said, attention is a quantitative parameter.

All repeated actions and learned judgments that we make or use automatically, psychology refers to the mechanism of procedural memory, postulating that tying shoelaces and assembling and disassembling a Kalashnikov assault rifle are performed by us without any attention at all. In this case, a clear and definite answer to the question: how many times do I have to assemble and disassemble the Kalashnikov assault rifle, so that this action is performed by me completely without involving even a bit of attention, of course, it does not give.

In fact, the more common a certain action (or pattern of thinking) is for us, the less attention it requires and less recognized. The necessary amount of attention is affected by two things - the knowledge of the model and its simplicity. There are particulars, but about them later. So flipping a switch and turning off the light after the toilet will require less attention than assembling an assault rifle, even if you took apart and assembled a Kalashnikov assault rifle more times than you turned off the light at home. Because the assembly of the machine consists, albeit of learned to reflexes, but still a sequence of simple actions. At the same time, turning off the lights at a party may require more attention than collecting an automatic machine. It depends on how often you visited this place and how often you used this switch.

I have not assembled or disassembled the M16 for more than twelve years since the termination of service in Tsahal. Trying to visualize this process, I found that I do not remember even how the receiver opens. Of course, fall into my hands this oar, I, having twisted the toy, will probably be able to restore the process, although it’s unlikely that I will put all the details on a rag in the correct order. But to try to tie the laces in an army way it is quite accessible to me. And then the trouble does not work. I remember what should be the output, but I do not know where to start. It’s a pity that it’s no longer possible to find out how many years have passed before this procedure would again require me to concentrate, after how many years I would have managed only with full concentration, and from which moment only a guide on youtube can help solve the problem.

2.3 The fact that the train will travel only where the path is paved is not argued for a long time. They argue about whether the driver is free inside the railway network, because he has a crowbar in the cockpit to switch arrows

Cognitive science divides attention into two types: involuntary attention that you do not control (#sarcasm: like automatically turning your head to the side of the shot) and arbitrary , which is guided by your free will.

The problem is that free will is a philosophical concept and, like any philosophy, is absolutely stupid and absurd.

It is half past three in the morning. I went up to the roof to smoke a cigarette and found my terribly talkative neighbor there. To maintain a conversation, having entered into a conversation with him or not, seems to depend on my free will. He’s a cool grandfather, and actually I am deeply likable. A journalist and traveler who was born and raised on an Indian reservation, and after working in different parts of the world, he would certainly be the object of my attention at another hour. Yes, and communication with him is a great opportunity to practice my worthless English, and I would not want to miss this opportunity in the future. In the end, I just don't want to look impolite. But at this particular moment in time, I am completely focused on the article, and it is difficult for me to tear myself away from my thoughts. Moreover, to switch to English, you need to switch your attention,which is too labile in my normal state and, like an exemplary ADHD, does not switch in hyperfocus. But a neighbor continues to talk to me, asking if I will celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas. It annoys me. I can hardly restrain myself, I just want to finish a cigarette in silence. Inside my head there is an intense struggle of competing processes. I want to throw him off the roof or bark irritably to dump him. But I do not want to seem impolite and ruin the relationship. After weighing all my inner desires, I smile tightly, answer that I am not celebrating either Christmas or Hanukkah, I wish him good night, I throw out only a third of my smoked cigarette, and I go away to write this paragraph to myself.will I celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas. It annoys me. I can hardly restrain myself, I just want to finish a cigarette in silence. Inside my head there is an intense struggle of competing processes. I want to throw him off the roof or bark irritably to dump him. But I do not want to seem impolite and ruin the relationship. After weighing all my inner desires, I smile tightly, answer that I am not celebrating either Christmas or Hanukkah, I wish him good night, I throw out only a third of my smoked cigarette, and I go away to write this paragraph to myself.will I celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas. It annoys me. I can hardly restrain myself, I just want to finish a cigarette in silence. Inside my head there is an intense struggle of competing processes. I want to throw him off the roof or bark irritably to dump him. But I do not want to seem impolite and ruin the relationship. After weighing all my inner desires, I smile tightly, answer that I am not celebrating either Christmas or Hanukkah, I wish him good night, I throw out only a third of my smoked cigarette, and I go away to write this paragraph to myself.But I do not want to seem impolite and ruin the relationship. After weighing all my inner desires, I smile tightly, answer that I am not celebrating either Christmas or Hanukkah, I wish him good night, I throw out only a third of my smoked cigarette, and I go away to write this paragraph to myself.But I do not want to seem impolite and ruin the relationship. After weighing all my inner desires, I smile tightly, answer that I am not celebrating either Christmas or Hanukkah, I wish him good night, I throw out only a third of my smoked cigarette, and I go away to write this paragraph to myself.

Did I have free will and could I do otherwise?

From a philosophical point of view, yes. I had free will and could throw my neighbor off the roof, calmly smoking a cigarette in silence. But then it is the philosophy that operates with infinitely idiotic abstractions, divorced from physical reality.

Because the concrete Self with its upbringing and learned patterns of behavior at this very moment, under the totality of all circumstances, could not do otherwise. Or it would not be me, or it would be the wrong neighbor, or it would be other circumstances.

How could that idiot from an evening talk show who cut his wife with an ax in the very circumstances in which he did it under the combination of all factors, including his extremely low intelligence, emotional restraint and experience, which formed his primitive thinking patterns, act differently? and behavior.

And in the same way, you have no choice not to be yourself and not to do as you do in the circumstances in which you are in view of the psyche and those learned models that you possess.

It doesn’t change anything for you, doesn’t take responsibility for your actions, doesn’t cancel the need to control yourself, learn Japanese and program C Carp even in times of acute irritation. It doesn’t cancel out for me the need to fulfill the tedious tasks of my psychotherapist in order to somehow cope with the boring but inevitable aspects of adult life.

Most often it is difficult to trace the entire chain of events that directed your attention to the activity that it is currently busy with.

But sometimes, as in the case of this article, it is possible several years ago to trace the whole sequence and every gram that it was cast on the scales of my psychic machine, making this very moment in which I am writing this text inevitable.

Any discussion of fatalism, predestination and our free will will be a pure philosophy.

I would like to leave the question of randomness and involuntary attention to later. We will talk about how the downward processes of attention are determined and how the system of internal coercion works, as well as the mechanisms for attracting attention, in the following parts. Moreover, this will be the main subject of our conversation.

2.4 A huge number of threads of our sensations stretch to a small drum of a loom of attention, which weaves the canvas of our subjective reality

In addition to types, cognitive science divides attention by forms. This is external or sensory attention directed to objects of the external world. Internal or intellectual , aimed at thought processes and our emotions, as well as motor , aimed at manipulating and locomotion.

By default, our attention is somehow distributed immediately in all these areas. Moreover, manipulation and locomotion require minimal involvement. Unconsciously, I can take your phone apart, though collecting it back without regaining consciousness will fail. Theoretically, we can walk even in a dream (and some practically), but we will no longer be able to react and maintain balance by stumbling behind the mat. However, in order to learn how to do a somersault, to hit the jaw with your knee or to dance a tango, you will have to take your mind off worries about unrequited love. Mastering the complex elements of motor skills new to us requires involvement and concentration on the learning process.

We can talk on the go, look at landscapes and enjoy our emotions. But with the utmost concentration on one thing, everything together is already difficult. In my case, with deep thought, I can easily enter the post, which I regularly do. In your case, you will not be able to walk along a tightrope, solve a differential equation in your mind and give yourself deeply to the Beethoven Appassionate with the whole palette of your feelings. Choose one. It will not be possible to combine even two of these cases. Either the music goes into the background sound or the equation is poorly resolved. I’m not talking about how to solve the problems while walking along the rope. Although musical improvisation on the violin is wonderful in that it requires concentration on complex motor skills, emotional involvement and the inclusion of a cognitive machine in the process.

An inconvenient boot and a leg worn down to blood will also devour a decent amount of attention. But if you are very hungry, then hunger will supplant the pain on the periphery, and it will subjectively weaken, becoming less conscious (not acute, acute pain itself will throw hunger out of the ring at once). Well, if you are in love, walking with your beloved through puddles, holding hands, and all attention is taken by a hurricane of feelings, then a bloody callus will creep to the periphery or completely fall out of attention, ceasing to be recognized depending on the characteristics of the psyche and the degree of love.

When our attention is overly intensely involved in some activity, we stop noticing that in a normal situation, we simply cannot ignore it, such as cold, hunger, thirst, pain, and an overflowing bladder. On the contrary, when we are forced to do something tedious and boring, we want to eat, drink, smoke, and from an uncomfortable chair it hurts our backs. It is significant that with depression and hypochondria in people often register psychogenic pain, devoid of physiological causes.

Despite the impressive arsenal of the latest technologies with which we are trying to look into the brain, we do not have an exact answer about how attention mechanisms work. We cannot say for sure whether all these relevant signals are suppressed or if our psyche ceases to be noticed. Probably partially suppressed, mostly lose gain and are ignored in this form.

Kahneman’s hypotheses about the modalities of attention do not fight badly with neurophysiology. In our brain there are areas for processing visual, sensory information, the auditory cortex, and the cerebellum, which is responsible for coordinating movements. But in pitch darkness, the visual cortex is involved in the processing of auditory signals, and when we try to perform somersaults for the first time while standing on a log, we are unlikely to strain only the cerebellum, as happens when a spoon enters our mouth during lunch.

I had to hit my stubborn ADHD friend of the artist with a fist in the shoulder to inform me that I would be waiting for him in the sideboard when he stuck to the Black Square in the Tretyakov Gallery. And my ex-wife, locking herself in a room and going crazy with Zaz songs, sometimes found my presence only physically bumping into me in her manic dance, although when I entered her eyes were open and she seemed to be looking directly at me.

Most of the work of cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is most consistent in its postulates with the latest scientific data, is based on the ability to track and work with automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are a good name. But I also call them peripheral thoughts. It took my psychotherapist a lot of time to realize that with my extremely narrow focus of attention, I had no peripheral thoughts. Rather, either they are not there, or I do not see them. Metaphorically speaking, the parameters of the focus of attention of an ordinary person, depending on the conditions, lie in the range between the locomotive spotlight and the table lamp, and in case of severe pathology F-90, like mine, its range lies somewhere between the gamma laser and the maser. Living with such a feature of the psyche in the modern world is not very simple.

2.5 Everyone agrees that units are needed. But opinions were divided: whether to introduce units of fortress or combustibility, depending on whether researchers drink or burn.

Among the properties of attention, cognitive science distinguishes concentration, distribution, stability, switchability and volume .

Psychology is still not able to determine the amount of general attention. No adequate units of measure have been invented to this day, and in numerous experiments it is measured in parrots, which you can follow on a computer screen, and in b-flats that you can distinguish from the general cacophony.

Many times, various areas of psychology have tried to approach this “stone flower", introducing either a unit of consciousness, then sensory attention, or perception. But no matter how much “Danila the master” beats, the flower either comes out with narrow limits of applicability, as is the case with the “perceptual units” used by cognitive scientists in relation to the mechanisms of visual attention, or crumbles in the hands when trying to use, as is the case with the units consciousnesses that the gestaltists operate in their wondrous hypotheses.

Most studies focus only on the study of external attention, although it has been reliably established that the piano you drag to the twelfth floor greatly reduces your ability to track both parrots and B flat, and greatly depends on how much you know about parrots and how good you are musical notation.

It is not very clear how to clear the results of experiments on measuring the volume of even selective attention to visual stimuli from factors such as unpaid credit, a burning deadline and a record to the dentist in the subjects' heads. But attention, these factors also gobble up and reduce our ability to concentrate on parrots.

Apparently, therefore, in some tests for memory and attention, chimpanzees bypass us.although our brain is bigger and more complicated. But this, of course, is just a joke. The main reason, I suspect, is different.

The mechanism of distribution of attention is not fully understood. It is not obvious whether such a division is a philosophical construct or whether it has real grounds. Neurophysiology suggests that the reasons for this division are more than real. But it is not clear whether it can flow from one form to another without a remainder, or whether there are any restrictions. It seems that there are some restrictions, but which ones are not exactly set yet.

If you are fond of extreme sports, you probably noticed one characteristic feature. While pulling the barbell, you can still get nervous between the approaches due to the burning deadline and the upcoming divorce, but when you, for example, get behind the wheel of a sports ATV and drive onto the race track, the internal dialogue instantly stops. Depression, spleen, anxiety, all your experiences, even the most powerful and obsessive thoughts disappear in an instant. When you rush along the track to the limit of your capabilities, you simply do not exist as a self-aware person. The piloting process absorbs all the attention without a trace. All that remains of you is vision and coordination, when you literally merge with the two hundred kilogram apparatus into a single whole. Actually, one can even feel the joy and enthusiasm of the process,only dropping gas or driving on a straight and level stretch of track. Because at the moment of passing the most difficult sections, even basic emotions, such as fear, are normalized and cease to be felt. In these seconds, consciousness in its usual form simply does not exist. The entire amount of intellectual attention, usually filled with thoughts and emotions, is redirected to the processing of visual information and coordination of movements. It is clear that after several hours of such madness, fatigue somehow manifests itself in sensations, but exhaustion, aching in the hands, numbness of the legs and pain in the shoulders are fully realized only at the finish.The entire amount of intellectual attention, usually filled with thoughts and emotions, is redirected to the processing of visual information and coordination of movements. It is clear that after several hours of such madness, fatigue somehow manifests itself in sensations, but exhaustion, aching in the hands, numbness of the legs and pain in the shoulders are fully realized only at the finish.The entire amount of intellectual attention, usually filled with thoughts and emotions, is redirected to the processing of visual information and coordination of movements. It is clear that after several hours of such madness, fatigue somehow manifests itself in sensations, but exhaustion, aching in the hands, numbness of the legs and pain in the shoulders are fully realized only at the finish.

Looking ahead, because this is useful to us in the following chapters, I note that this completely transcendent, not attainable under normal conditions, concentration of attention does not require any even the most insignificant volitional efforts. You simply turn the throttle and the attention mechanism switches to hyper focus mode. Everything happens by itself, just as a reaction to an external stimulus. The iron hand of the heartless bitch, our prefrontal cortex, which makes us the next loan payment and a burning deadline, forcing to overcome procrastination with a creak and focus on work tasks, is completely not involved in this process. BS, that is, PF there is no need to fear us with fear and horror, frightening us with the consequences of the fall, to force us to concentrate on management. Overconcentration arises by itself in the complete absence of internal struggle. Though,if I had completely lost my adequacy and suddenly decided to drive through the wild desert, as on a prepared and familiar track, the prefrontal cortex would probably try to stop me before the start and warn that I will turn my neck off with a guarantee. But unlike you, I would have missed her warning. Therefore, the emergency room was my second home in childhood.

Thinking about the magnitude of this conditional total amount of attention, it becomes clear that we are not dealing with a constant. And this parameter fluctuates in a wide range depending on the mental tone. It is also found that with mental exhaustion, in addition to reducing the attention resource, it becomes absent-minded, the ability of volitional concentration weakens, and with non-volitional concentration, the focus of attention is pathologically narrowed. With prolonged overwork and deprivation of sleep, its decay begins.

2.6 When schizophrenia softly whispers: “Let's fly ...”

From this place I would especially like to make a reservation. Because cognitive psychology since the days of Frederick Bartlett has been an age-old discussion about whether attention should be considered an independent active process or not. Nevertheless, the discipline continues to consider attention as not an independent mental process, manifesting itself only in the context of other processes and characterizing them. We carefully, or inattentively watch, listen, think or do something. In addition to thinking, emotions, sensory perception and coordination of movements, attention provides the work of our memory, but outside these mechanisms it is elusive and does not manifest itself in any way.

What I will say now will not be in the outline of the actual hypotheses that cognitive science operates with. The risk of posing as an idiot is great, but I will voice my amateurish opinion.

You see what’s the matter, another very important property of the psyche that is found in normal people with extreme mental exhaustion and which convexly shows ADHD people is that even the most learned patterns of behavior or thinking begin to crumble, disrupting the usual order, if the resource The attention that the process provides falls below a critical level. We begin to see not what is, to hear not what we are told, to understand not what is written, to assemble the Kalashnikov assault rifle in the wrong sequence. A simple experiment with prolonged sleep deprivation immediately reveals that the stronger the psyche is depleted, the more simple actions require more attention, and after 72 - 96 hours of wakefulness, full concentration on the process is required to tie the shoelaces. Implicit memory mechanisms fail and stop working,which psychologists, because of fantastic carelessness, attribute to the mechanisms of unconscious learning functioning as if completely without attention. In extreme cases, even the integrity of our memories is violated, emotions are confused, and the most elementary speech models begin to lose coherence and consistency.

Speaking of attention, we mean that it is behind some kind of mythical consciousness, the elusive Freudian matter, directing our attention to the external environment, listening and peering into the distance, then at internal processes like thinking, our emotional experiences or sensory sensations of the body. But more often distributing it between dreams of the Caribbean, a bad tooth, a TV, abuse of neighbors, assembly of a machine gun and a cat on the carpet.

But where the hell is our consciousness, what mechanisms are provided by the work, and how can it control attention if there are no feelings or thoughts without attention ?! Everything begins to fall apart into fragments. We are not able to think coherently and build thoughts in the simplest logical sequences, and our memory turns into an incoherent set of fractals!

In this case, the only explanation that comes to my mind is that the soul directs our attention.

But such statements are excusable for Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva at the age at which she made them. All of us who are not waiting for cancer, heart attack or stroke, are waiting for senile dementia. Her contribution to science will not depreciate from this, and we will still remember her as an outstanding world-renowned neurophysiologist, but excuse me, I can’t seriously discuss such nonsense.

From conversations about consciousness, my heart begins to ache, like in Stirlitz when I look at Pastor Schlag's ski exercises. There is no other scientific direction that would be so heavily poisoned by philosophy as psychology.

If you throw away the toxic philosophical rubbish about self-consciousness, conscious and unconscious, in the trash, replacing them with attention, we immediately begin to converge all parts of the equation, both at the level of neurophysiology and at the level of psychology, with the cognitive, even my beloved psychiatry becomes kinder and clearer.

I hope you do not expect me to completely solve this equation?
It’s too tough for me even for the QFT Lagrangian, not to mention the 6D (2,0) superconformal field theory, which has no Lagrangian description, is holographically dual to the M-theory with the AdS7 × S4 group and, in the case of compactification by S1, leads to a five-dimensional supersymmetric theory.

All the phenomena that we are accustomed to attribute to our consciousness, whether it is memory, thinking, emotions, sensory sensations, coordination, etc., arise only as a result of the attention mechanism.

And then the only possible answer to the question: who controls the attention, will be - no one and nothing.

You are the attention itself!

Attention! Homo Consciousness. I