Our attention is constantly merging, dividing, intensifying, or dimming. You’ve experienced this when you thought you were listening to your friend. You saw their mouth moving and even nodded in agreement. But you realized you didn’t retain any information when they finished speaking. Or when you’re ordering food, reading off the menu, choosing your toppings, and you begin to taste the flavours before taking a bite.
So, what are focus and attention? How do our senses perceive the internal and external environment? How can mindfulness and meditation foster clear thinning to make the best decisions?
Let’s find out.
What Happens In Our Mind When We Meditate?
You probably hope nothing, but ironically, a lot occurs. For simplicity’s sake, we will discuss the most basic form of meditation: sitting or lying down and closing our eyes. It seems simple, right? If you’re familiar with our other posts on neuroplasticity and mindfulness, you may not be surprised to learn that something profound happens in our mind and body when we sit down and close our eyes.
Our bodies have two sensory processing methods.
- Interoception: helps you know and feel what’s going on inside your body, like when your stomach is full or empty or when you need to use the bathroom. Interoception deals with every sense at the level of our skin and inward.
- Exteroception: deals with everything we perceive outside our skin, like the sound of a car driving by or the construction going on next door.
When we close our eyes, most of our perception shifts to interception, allowing us to focus our attention internally. This is why when we close our eyes and meditate, we are able to connect deeply with our breath, muscles, tendons, heart and everything within.
What Does Pay Attention Mean?
We have spotlights of attention. We constantly sense internal and external factors, such as the floor on the bottoms of our feet, but we only perceive the sensation when we focus on it. That is attention or perception. We would be completely overwhelmed if we perceived everything everywhere all the time.
Rather, we have spotlights of attention that are either narrow or broad. Hold your hand in front of your face and notice how many fingers you have and the clarity with which you perceive them. Now swing your arm out ninety degrees so that your hand is in your peripheral vision. You can still see your hand, but the image is blurry.
If you’ve ever been engaged in conversation with someone and noticed when another person has entered the room, you’ve experienced two spotlights of attention. We are able to merge spotlights and hone in on a task or person so that our attention is undivided—laser focus.
How Does The Prefrontal Cortex Influence Decision Making?
The prefrontal cortex enables you to direct your attention to something specific. It can split the spotlights, merge them, or dial up the intensity of how closely you pay attention, or it can help you disassociate or disengage.
The prefrontal cortex has a left side and a right side. It’s the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that gives us the ability to control and engage our attention. For every structure you have on one side of the brain, you have on the other side—except the pineal gland.
The pineal gland, also known as the third eye, is found in the prefrontal cortex. Descartes, a 17th-century philosopher, described it as the seat of rational thought. Our attention is focused on our third eye when we shut our eyes and mute exteroception. Mindfulness and meditation help build stronger connections between our mind and body because they are in a direct relationship with the neurochemical and physiological structures undermining all of our thoughts and actions.
This is a fancy way of saying we’re built to meditate.
How Can Mindfulness Help Increase Focus?
Mental focus follows visual focus. Close your eyes, shut out the external world and focus your attention inward.
Practicing mindfulness techniques like breathwork techniques, body scans, Zen mediation, Vipassana mediation, and yoga mediation will not only improve your focus but it will affect your compassion and cognitive control in the decision-making process.
These practices help you take control of the space between stimulus and response.
Inner Focus: The Prefrontal Cortex and the Art of Mindful Meditation
Our attention constantly shifts, merges, and dims, affecting how we perceive and interact with the world. Meditation and mindfulness help harness attention, allowing us to focus inward and connect deeply with our sensations.
Understanding interoception and exteroception teaches us how our minds and bodies process internal and external stimuli. The prefrontal cortex, particularly the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, enables us to direct and control our attention, enhancing our decision-making capabilities.
Through mindfulness practices like meditation, breathwork, and yoga, we can improve our focus, compassion, and cognitive control, ultimately leading to better decisions and a more profound connection between mind and body. By closing our eyes and tuning into our inner world, we strengthen the neural pathways that support attention and clarity, demonstrating the transformative power of mindful practices.
