R.A.S.

At any given moment there are over 2 million 'bits' of information available to us in our surroundings for us to observe - visually, audibly, emotionally, socially, etc. Our brains, however, are only capable of taking in 134 bits/second, and most of the time it's the same 134 bits or so second-to-second, so, in essence, it's as if we're walking around with a paper bag over our heads with only a pea-sized hole to look out of; we're missing most of the information available to us, and as a result, what we or anybody can possibly know is incomplete.

I discovered this a couple of years ago, and it's something that's on my mind regularly - the R.A.S.: Reticular Activating System, a little part of the brain that acts like a filter for our senses so we don't get overloaded, and we can concentrate. Perhaps it's differences in this part that affects people with A.D.D. ... A while back I found the following video. The more you think about it, the more you realize how much the R.A.S. affects us in so many ways.