cognition

hierarchy of cognitive domains

spatial attention
- ability to prioritise signals from a given spatial location
selective or focused attention
- ability to prioritise some forms of information and to suppress others on the basis of a functional goal
divided attention
- ability to share attention between simultaneous tasks
arousal or sustained attention
- ability to self-maintain an alert or ready to respond state

difficulty listening or concentrating on a task
difficulty following conversational speech
reduced ability to decide on importance of information
difficulty in comprehending written material
difficulty in concentrating to the end of a meal
easily distracted eg. burning toast making breakfast, difficulty shopping with a shopping list
difficulty in writing down messages whilst listening to a conversation on a phone

see also: memory
implicit memory
- priming and conditioning
- procedural (motor skills)
explicit memory
- events (episodic)
- semantic (facts)
working memory
- new learning requires:
  - registration
  - acquisition (encoding)
  - storage and rehearsal
  - retrieval
forgetting
- active loss of memories appears to be an important physiologic process to allow further memories
- process may involve the protein scribble which appears to combine the Rac1 and dopamine pathways together into a single dynamic pathway that controls active forgetting