The interesting thing about this for me is that I've always assumed that the default state of an awake mind is a kind of inattentiveness where we take in an process no data at all. But this article makes it sound like, by default, our minds are constantly trying to process and take everything in, and the extra work goes in to filtering the input we get.

This seems to match with the phenomenal experience of being overwhelmed in noisy or crowded situations, and of the difficult part of meditation being teaching yourself not to suppress experiences as they arise and just take everything in.