Once something has the brain's attention, the brain must deal with the information, or begin to process it.If we functionally explore our brain and its processes, we discover that it has specific complex systems that become aware of and respond to internal and external challenges (input/process/output) and that the process generally follows a rapid logical biological sequence...Important internal and external sensory information activates our arousal/alerting system (emotion), which activates our focusing system (attention), which activates our various solution systems (learning/memory, reason/logic, problem solving), which activate our response systems (behavior, movement). We thus cognitvely engage, solve, and act (input/process/output). Each of these three major functions is processed by specific dedicated brain systems and subsystems. ... All cognitive activity is dependent on the initial activation of our integrated sensory/emotional/attentional system. It is biologically impossible to learn something if we are not attending to it, and we do not attend to things that are not emotionally meaningful to us.
Emotional arousal is an indication that something important has occurred or is about to occur. But where? To find out, our emotions activate attention, a complex cognitive system that selects and temporarily focuses on key emotionally important elements in an often confusing environment and maintains goal-directed behavior in highly distractible situations. Our attention system is composed of a number of distinct nueral networks, each of which actively carries out specific attentional functions by itself, or in interaction with other cognitive systems.
The Orienting System ... disengages us from what we were attending to and focuses us on the new target. We generally shift our attention to emotionally arousing things that contrast sharply with our current focus and ignore (or merely monitor) steady states, subtle differences, and gradual changes.
The Executive Attention System ... draws heavily on memory to recognize the identity of the new target (foreground), determine its significance, and separate it from the background information (which it them merely monitors or ignores). This is typically an efficient unconscious process that draws on established responses, but we don confront situations in which it is not so obvious what we should focus on in a confusing situation, and so our Executive Attention System must consciously make the decision such as to respond to a novel situation that will require planning and decision making, to alter a habitual response, or to correct an error.
The Vigilance System ... maintains a sustained focus on something while ignoring small, random, potentially distracting environmental changes. The Vigilance System thus helps us to ignore minor but not major distractions. (pp. 23-32)
Thus, according to Sylvester, the brain processes in two ways: reflexively and reflectively. In his book A Biological Brain in a Cultural Classroom (2000), he explains these processes more fully. Most of the challenges the environment presents to us are not threatening and do not require immediate action. The types of problems we usually face deal with our social and personal identity and with the natural or technological world. We have time to reflect in these types of situations, examine the facts, and come to solutions slowly. As we begin to process such problems, our learning/memory system searches for stored information from related past experiences. Learning is the process of acquiring new information. Memory is where past experiences are stored. Because memory and learning are so well integrated in the brain, Sylvester feels it is important for teachers to understand how memory works. This is how Sylvester describes memory:An important property of our brain's sensory and perceptual systems is the ability to recognize and trigger responses to real and imagined dangers and opportunities. ... We have a relatively slow, analytic, reflective, (primarily cortical) system to explore the objective, factual elements of a situation, to compare them with related memories of past experience, and then to rationally respond. ... We [also] have a fast, conceptual, reflexive, (primarily subcortical) system that identifies the dangers and opportunities in a situation and then quickly activities powerful innate or learned automatic responses if survival seems problematic. This fast, stress-driven system developed to respond to imminent predatory danger and fleeting feeding and mating opportunities. ... This reflexive response, because it enhances survival, is the default system. ... The slower, reflective system may later intervene with a more rational and appropriate solution ... (Sylvester, 1999, pp. 65-66)
Sylvester describes the fast, reflexive brain process in this way:
Scientists generally divide memory into the following systems: (a) a short-term/limited capacity system called working memory ... that has no long-term recall, and (b) a more complex long-term memory system that unconsciously processes skills (procedural memory) (such as knowing how to touch-type), and that consciously processes factual label-and-location information (declarative memory). ... Scientists further subdivide declarative memory into autobiographical memories of personal experiences (episodic memory) such as our memory of learning how to type, and cultural memories of more abstract and symbolic objects, events, and relationships (semantic memory) such as knowing common elements on all word processors. We further tend to remember when and where specific episodic learning activities took place, but not semantic learning. For example, I remember studying spelling in elementary school, but I do not remember when I learned to spell accommodate correctly. ... Because emotion is the thermostat that activates the attentional focus that may lead to learning/memory, we create separate emotional memories that help spark the activation (and a subcortical structure called the amygdala appears to play an important role in processing emotional memories). Think of a factual memory as being more about remembering what happened, and emotional memory as being about remembering how you felt about what happened. Both are important, but our emotional memories are the more powerful. ... Factual memory formation and recall require emotional time and space associations with the various elements of a perceived object or event (such as whether a history fact will be on the test). A factual memory is thus tied to its context and so is easily learned and forgotten. If school requirements are the only context for the material to be learned, it is easily forgotten when we leave school... We thus have the best access to weak factual memories ... through strong emotional memories... Factual memories without emotional context are difficult to store and retrieve. (pp. 35-37)
Threatening or opportunistic challenges often require an immediate response (such as what to do about a rapidly approaching car or how to take advantage of a fleeting opportunity). Our brain has a separate, three-part, stress-driven reflexive system that quickly activates powerful, principally innate, but also learned automatic fight/flight response programs when the emotional impetus is basically to quickly attack, flee, or mate. ...Reflexive responses tend to occur on the basis of high emotional arousal and focus and on limited superficial information because we do not have time to gather all the facts. When survival is at stake, a rapid (even if it is not the best possible) response is preferable to informed death from delay. ... Worse, the neurotransmitter and hormonal discharges associated with fear can strengthen the emotional and weaken the factual memories of an event if the stressful situation is serious and/or chronic. We become fearful of something but we are often not sure why. ... Because the point of a reflexive response is to respond quickly, it is important for our emotion/attention system to turn up the reflexive pathways and to turn down the reflective pathways that would delay the response. The stress hormones enhance the functioning of reflexive pathways, but they can negatively affect the robustness of chronically turned-down reflective pathways. ... The reflexive system evolved, however, to be used as a temporary rather than continuous response system. ... Unfortunately, some students live in such an insecure, fearful environment that their reflexive system seems to run continuously. A condition called learned helplessness can result from such an environment. The child eventually senses no personal control over an unpredictable environment and simply gives up the innate drive to cope. (pp. 38- 40)