Language
Country/Area
No result found
The brain's 'attention trio': How alertness, orienting, and executive control work together?
Attentional control, commonly known as concentration, refers to the ability of an individual to choose what to pay attention to and what to ignore. It is also called endogenous attention or executive attention. Simply put, attention control can be described as an individual’s ability to focus. This process is primarily regulated by prefrontal regions of the brain, including the anterior cingulate cortex, and attention control is closely related to other executive functions such as working memory.
Research Overview
The brain creates a system of three networks: alertness (maintaining awareness), orientation (information from sensory input), and executive control (conflict resolution). These three networks were studied using experimental designs involving adults, children, and monkeys, including individuals with and without attentional abnormalities. Research methods include the Stroop task and the Flanker task, which are techniques used to study executive control, and analyzed through event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Some studies have focused on a specific aspect of attention (e.g., executive control), while some experiments have focused on multiple regions to examine interactions between vigilance, orienting, and executive control networks.
More recently, the Attention Network Test (ANT) designed by Fan and Posner was used to obtain efficiency measures of these three networks and allow examination of the relationships between them. The test requires participants to respond quickly to prompts displayed on a computer screen while focusing their attention on a central target.
Development
Infancy
Early researchers believed that the prefrontal cortex was functionally silent during the first year of life. Similar early research showed that infants one year old or younger are completely passive in allocating their attention, unable to choose what to pay attention to and what to ignore. This can be seen in the phenomenon of "fixed gaze," where infants are unable to disengage their attention from a particularly salient target. However, other research suggests that even very young infants have some ability to control the allocation of their attention, albeit a relatively limited one.
Childhood
As the prefrontal lobes mature, children become more able to exercise attentional control, although children's attentional control abilities are still far inferior to those of adults. Some children have developmental delays in attention control, thought to be due to the relatively slow development of prefrontal regions, which sometimes leads to a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Old age
Some research on aging and cognition has focused on declines in working memory processes and attentional control. One study compared neural activity in attentional control in young (21-27 years old) and older (60-75 years old) subjects using fMRI measurements during the Stroop task. The results showed that reactivity in brain regions related to attentional control was significantly reduced in the older group, suggesting that older adults have a reduced ability to utilize attentional control in daily life. Age-related reductions in attentional control arise primarily from reduced brain weight.
Research shows that after the age of sixty, the brain loses weight rapidly, and this process is caused by the reduction of white and gray matter in the brain.
Abnormal development of attentional control
Disorders in attention control are not just seen in ADHD, but also in autism, anxiety, and other conditions. Many studies have found that babies born prematurely, as well as those with genetic disorders such as Down syndrome and Williams syndrome, also have deficits in attention control. Children from low socioeconomic families also report impairments in attentional control during early stages of development.
Correlation with mental illness
Research shows that individuals with low attentional control are highly likely to have other mental health problems. Low attention control is common in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and is also common in patients with schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety disorders, depression, etc. These patients generally have poor attentional control and may be at increased risk for developing psychopathological conditions.
Researchers suggest that attention should be paid to the impact of attentional control in research on other mental illnesses to address the growing problem in this field.
Application
Performance
Attentional control theory focuses on the relationship between anxiety and cognitive performance. This theory posits that the effects of anxiety on attentional control are critical to understanding the relationship between anxiety and performance.
Mindfulness
Research shows that even just four days of mindfulness meditation training can significantly improve visuospatial processing, working memory, and executive function. Still, research results on whether mindfulness can directly influence attentional control remain mixed.
Learn
Scholars believe that attention control is a key factor in cognitive development and can affect the acquisition of other skills. For example, there is a close relationship between infants' attention control abilities and their performance in language acquisition.
Visual attention control
The brain has a specialized attention system, and visual attention is mainly based on three different representations: location, feature, and object base. This reflects how the brain has evolved to adjust how attention works.
Audio Alertness
The "cocktail party effect" is when a person can hear their own name even when they are not concentrating on a conversation. This suggests that attentional control is critical to the ability to filter environmental information.
Conclusion
Based on the above findings, attention control plays an important role in different stages of individual development and its relationship with mental health. As technology advances, we can expect more research in the future to reveal the complexity of the brain’s attention system and how to effectively improve and enhance this ability, ultimately affecting our quality of life. How do you think we can better improve our attention control?
