Your sense of
the world and
movement
within it
It feels as though we experience the world raw, directly and as it
really is. But that is to underestimate the almighty storm of informa-
tion raging outside of us. If our brains processed all this, we’d go into
meltdown. So our perception of the world is heavily edited, filtered
through various sensory pathways. At the same time, our brains
compensate by filling in missing information and always striving to
predict what will happen next. The result is that we sense things that
aren’t there, and miss an awful lot that is.
Part of this selective view of the world arises because of our limited atten-
tional resources. Like a spotlight, the brain focuses on some sensory infor-
mation at the expense of the rest. You can experience this by suddenly
paying attention to the contact of the seat on your back and buttocks (if
you’re sitting), or to the pressure of the ground on the soles of your feet.
That sensory information was always available, but it’s only when you
tune into it that it reaches the level of conscious awareness.
As we move about in the world, we’re constantly flicking our atten-
tion back and forth, from one object of interest to another, forever
zooming in and out with varying degrees of intensity. We do this within
each sensory domain and also across the senses. But our attention is a
finite resource. So the more we invest in processing one thing, the less
we have left over for others. There are some exceptions to this rule: for
example, there’s evidence that our mental performance can be enhanced
when we’re walking or cycling, probably because of the benefit of
increased arousal.