6 Ways to Capture Students’ Attention - Other

In this article, we’ll touch on insights from neuroscience about the attention-getting system of the brain. Understanding this process informs teachers about specific techniques they can employ to capture students’ attention as new topics are introduced.  

The brain evolved to promote survival. Every second, millions of bits of sensory information from the receptors of the eyes, ears, internal organs, skin, and muscles make their way to the brain’s attention entry gate, but only about 1 percent of it enters consciousness. The system that determines what gets in (i.e., what the brain attends to) is the reticular activating system (RAS). This primitive network of cells in the lower brain stem, through which all sensory input must pass to reach any higher regions of the brain, is essentially the same in your cat, your dog, your child, and you.