Tightrope Pt. 3B; sensory integration

There is so much sensory data coming in that we would totally lose our minds if our brains did not have a way to filter & prioritize it all. And indeed, many behavioral problems have their roots in a person's inability to filter sensory data appropriately. (See -- even I can get judgmental about it. But darn it, being different CAN be a problem in some situations!)

One of the thing that makes this filtering so difficult is that it must be flexible, to adapt to changing situations. If you are hiking through the jungle, & an ant starts crawling up your leg, it is a good thing to know about. (Some of those jungle ants can be quite nasty!) So your brain would appropriately register that tickle as something to check out.

However, if a tiger suddenly appears out of the bushes, that is no time to be worrying about the ant! Your life depends on focussing on the tiger. (And indeed, if you stop to brush the ant away, that movement will only attract the tiger! People with severe sensory processing issues cannot ignore the ant to deal with the tiger -- not good, no matter how non-judgmental you are trying to be!)

One of the things the brain does to help us filter the incoming sensory data is to set parameters for "safety" or "comfort." It ignores stimuli that fall within those safe/comfortable parameters when they are not of primary concern, & blares an alarm -- triggering the famous fight or flight response of song & story -- if the parameters are exceeded.