Attention

In predictive-processing terms, attention is the assignment of "precision" — a technical term for the confidence weight — to specific streams of prediction error. High precision means: this signal is trustworthy, respond to it. Low precision means: ignore this.^1,6

This is why attention feels like emphasis: whatever is attended to becomes brighter, sharper, more consequential in the resulting perception.⁶

Attention is captured from below by salience — sudden movement, novelty, threat — and directed from above by goals, plans, and interest. Both routes shape which signals are precision-weighted at any given moment.¹

The brain cannot precision-weight everything at once. Attention is therefore a budget, and expenditure has costs. Sustained attention on one thing means diminished capacity for others.³⁰

The felt experience of "attention fatigue" is the physiological consequence of this budgeting.³⁰

Where attention goes, plasticity follows. Nervous System Intelligence includes the observation and honoring of one’s own attention: what one is granting precision to is what one is quietly encoding.