When It Doesn't Work

Computers can malfunction, and so can our working brain. Many brain disorders are related to the specific systems that process the emotion and attention functions that drive our working brain.

EMOTION. As implied above, emotion is a sort of biological thermostat tuned to environmental changes, and especially to high contrast stimuli that signal a potential danger or opportunity. Some stimuli are innately arousing (a large object moving quickly in our direction typically activates fear, even in infants). Other emotionally arousing stimuli are learned through experience (a spam email message typically activates anger in those heavily involved with email correspondence).

Our emotional response is affected by a personal lifelong temperamental bias (located somewhere along a wary-to-curious continuum) that often biases our initial view of a challenge as being a danger or an opportunity. Mood is a short-term bias that factors in our current level of interest in the challenge and the amount of energy we currently have to devote to it. Thus, something ignored one day might anger us the next.

ATTENTION. An emotional arousal activates both memories of related challenges and our attentional system, which shifts our focus to the new challenge. The you have mail note mentioned above was able to capture my attention because my writing had temporarily hit an impasse, so even an email message seemed more exciting. If I had been writing up a storm at the moment, I would certainly have ignored the email alert.

Our attention system is functionally composed of an orienting system that shifts from the current to a new focus, an executive system that recognizes the challenge and searches for the relevant resources needed to meet it, and a vigilance system that hold our attention on the current challenge while ignoring minor distractions. A major distraction will activate the orienting system, which will shift to the new focus, and begin the process anew.