attractor dynamics that are resilient to distraction
what's this mean?
Here's one of the original papers, if you are interested: (apparently the link unpaywall gave me was temporary, you can go to this link and use unpaywall to get a free version) https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/10/9/910/289091
Essentially, given a certain set of organized connections and a certain balance between inhibition and excitation, you can design a network of neurons that once activated by a particular stimulus, maintains activity that encodes the stimulus across time. In this case, each neuron is tuned to a spatial location, and neurons that encode similar locations are most connected to each other, with randomly interspersed inhibitory neurons.
When you provide this type of network with a spatial stimulus, it generates a "bump" of activity around the to be encoded stimulus, which is why they've been called "bump attractors".
These aren't necessarily the only type of attractor systems you can produce from simple neuron systems that encodes information and is also resistant to distraction, but they are the most biophysically plausible of the bunch.
I see. I'll give the paper a read, thanks. I think it's the terminology that's making it more complicated than it is. I don't know shit about neuroscience so is consciousness just a type of memory? I agree with you that people make it out to be mystical when it isn't because they want to feel special. I guess it's easier for people to live life thinking that way ---