Brain Changes Initiative

Have you ever bought a new car... and suddenly it felt like everyone else owned the exact same one?

Or learned a new word and started hearing it everywhere?

Neuroscience calls it selective attention.

Your brain is flooded with an incredible amount of sensory information every second. If it tried to consciously process all of it, you’d never be able to focus.

Instead, it relies on powerful filtering systems to decide what deserves your attention.

One of those systems is the Reticular Activating System (RAS), a collection of nuclei in the brainstem involved in regulating arousal, wakefulness, and attentional filtering. It helps determine which information reaches conscious awareness.

Working alongside it is the Salience Network, which continuously asks:
“Is this important?”
If something is emotionally meaningful, relevant to your goals, novel, or potentially threatening, your brain gives it priority.

This also explains why your mindset matters.
If you’re constantly focused on everything that’s going wrong, your attentional systems become increasingly tuned to detect problems.
Your brain isn’t manifesting bad things into reality, it’s just becoming more efficient at finding what it’s been trained to prioritize.

On the flipside, when you intentionally look for progress, opportunities, learning, or gratitude, you’re helping shape what your brain becomes better at detecting over time.



Sources:

- Dosenbach, N. U. F., et al. (2025). The brain’s action-mode network. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
- Menon, V. (2023). 20 years of the default mode network: A review and synthesis. Neuron.
- Taran, S., et al. (2023). The reticular activating system: A narrative review of discovery, evolving understanding, and relevance to current formulations of Brain Death. Canadian Journal of Anesthesia/Journal Canadien d’anesthésie.

Do you ever wonder why Messi or Modrić always seem to know where everyone is before they even receive the ball?

Their brain has already built a prediction of what’s about to happen.
The world’s best footballers constantly scan the field, use their peripheral vision to gather information, focus attention on the most important cues, and recognize patterns they’ve seen thousands of times before.

By the time the ball reaches them, they’ve already made the decision.
That’s one of the biggest differences between reacting to the game and controlling it.



Sources:

- Aksum, K. M., et al. (2021). Scanning activity of elite football players in 11 vs. 11 match play: An eye-tracking analysis on the duration and visual information of scanning. PLOS ONE.
- Triggs, A. O., et al. (2025). Perceptual-cognitive skills and talent development environments in soccer: A scoping review. PLOS ONE.
- Müller, S., et al. (2024). Accelerating visual anticipation in sport through temporal occlusion training: A meta-analysis. Sports Medicine.
- Ivosevic, L., et al. (2025). Anticipation in soccer: Skilled players benefit from early pattern recognition in corner kick situations. Frontiers in Psychology.
- Hunter, A. H., et al. (2025). Visual scanning and technique improve performance in a standardized soccer passing task. Applied Biomechanics for Sport Sciences.