Explain What's Happening In My Brain

[Modified]

DONUTS

 

[Minoosh]

How do you know that without knowing what the current evidence is?

I said that the discovery that unconscious thinking outpaces conscious thinking does not get into the neurochemical correlates of what constitutes a "thought" and how that is retrieved by the unconscious - not that there was no evidence on the topic.

It's late here, but tomorrow I'll try to find you some interesting research about the very active functions beyond the conscious brain.

OK.

 

[Minoosh]

DBPC study please.

I suspect that active minds do puzzles, and stay active and alert into old age too. It's selection bias. And biased towards doing brain teasers rather than actual thinking. How is my sister's Sudoku better than me reading and posting here?

I didn't say that Sudoku is better than reading and posting in ISF. Don't quite know what you mean by "actual thinking."

 

[Minoosh]

But when it comes to human you are severely limited to looking at a dead brain , so it is difficult to check how much its and how neuron react to music or it remembers or compose.
Then when it comes to live brain we only have "averaging" instrument which tells you how much zone are consuming sugar, but this is a rough "binocular" view from far away and can't tell you much of the nitty gritty on the neuronal network (e.g. NMRI, CT or fMRI).

I suspect that the development of artificial intelligence will provide us with more insight into the how the squishy computer in our heads works. Maybe it already has. I'm not an expert.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

The thing you have to remember is that your consciousness isn't the actor but the audience. You're made aware of some of the processes in your brain, but not necessarily in the right order or at the right time. That's the way I understand it, anyway.

Which also leads to the rather depressing observation that most of what we are doing when explaining ourselves is rationalizing, not reasoning. Happens all the time with OPs in the woo/consciousness/God threads.

 

[sphenisc]

Now think about it: your brain decided to thank us well before you were made aware of it. You're like John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich; trapped in a body you can't control.

Apropos of nothing, I was wondering the other day whether he had to audition for the part.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

DONUTS

NOT SPUD

 

[Minoosh]

NOT SPUD

If you're going by actual valid Scrabble words, DUP SNOT works too. SPUN DOT. TOD PUNS. STUN POD. NUT PODS. PUNT SOD.

Gotta stop.

 

[Belz...]

Unfortunately I see POTUS in there.

 

[casebro]

I didn't say that Sudoku is better than reading and posting in ISF. Don't quite know what you mean by "actual thinking."

If you have to ask....

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The biggest problem is that it is difficult to slice and dice a person or make a study at the neuronal level while keeping them alive.

There is no doubt that it is all chemical, neuron potential, and transmitter, as we have sliced, diced, and tested animals and neuron reaction of various small and bigger animals, from rodent , insects to mammals.

But when it comes to human you are severely limited to looking at a dead brain , so it is difficult to check how much its and how neuron react to music or it remembers or compose.
Then when it comes to live brain we only have "averaging" instrument which tells you how much zone are consuming sugar, but this is a rough "binocular" view from far away and can't tell you much of the nitty gritty on the neuronal network (e.g. NMRI, CT or fMRI).

I could be wrong, but I am relatively sure that while you may find explanation on why *some* type of melody are good among certain culture, and why we human as general like scales like the musical scale, you probably won't find much which explain it as such a low level as neuronal network, neither hearing nor composing.

We can study people with brain damage, we need not cause it. Sample sizes are small and harder to come by, but we can learn a tremendous amount from single patients.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think some are "Freudian Slips", where what you accidentally communicate is true, from your subconscious. Half of psychological evaluations are to try to figure out how a person's subconscious works- ink blot tests off the top of my head.

And isn't stuttering a deal of subconscious/conscious difficulty? "That" when you mean "than" isn't a typo, it's digital stuttering.

Nope. And that's rather weird baseless speculation, IMO.

There is evidence from people with brain damage that their hands are not strictly being controlled by conscious thought. I'll have to search for the study but one patient who could not recognize the angle of a slot, could not tell you what the angle was or draw the angle, could nonetheless, put their hand correctly into it. Visual perception was occurring outside the consciousness center and going to the part of the brain controlling the hand muscles without the detour though the consciousness center.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's time for a paradigm shift. Actually, those of you who haven't shifted should consider doing so. I shifted paradigms about the unconscious brain several decades ago. This article discussing the paradigm shift is a decade old.

The Unconscious Mind

...there now exists substantial evidence that the unconscious is not identifiably less flexible, complex, controlling, deliberative, or action-oriented than is its counterpart. ...

...this research has demonstrated the existence of several independent unconscious behavioral guidance systems: perceptual, evaluative, and motivational. From this perspective, it is concluded that in both phylogeny and ontogeny, actions of an unconscious mind precede the arrival of a conscious mind—that action precedes reflection....

Until quite recently in the history of science and philosophy, mental life was considered entirely or mainly conscious in nature ...

...at least two different “not conscious” processes were studied over the course of the 20th century within largely independent research traditions that seemed barely to notice the other’s existence: the New Look research in perception involving the preconscious analysis of stimuli prior to the products of the analysis being furnished to conscious awareness, and skill-acquisition research involving the gain in efficiency of processes with practice over time until they become subconscious (see the review in Bargh & Chartrand, 2000).

And so on.

One example is how sensory input is altered before it reaches the conscious center. You don't see the central blind spot because the brain fills it in. The brain decides whether you are looking at a hole or a hill based on the assumption light comes from the top of the page.

As for my fingers typing words I did not think of or intend to type:

Note how the qualities of the two not-conscious processes differ: in the New Look research, the person did not intend to engage in the process and was unaware of it; in the skill-acquisition research, the person did intend to engage in the process, which, once started, was capable of running off without need of conscious guidance. Typing and driving a car (for the experienced typist and driver, respectively) are classic examples of the latter—both are efficient procedures that can run off outside of consciousness, but nonetheless both are intentional processes. (One doesn’t sit down to type without meaning to in the first place, and the same applies to driving a car.)

The article goes on to explain how subliminal is BS. The stimuli too weak to have much effect. There is an excellent discussion in the article about how the term, unconscious was previously perceived and how new research is changing the entire concept of the unconscious brain.

If one shifts the operational definition of the unconscious from the processing of stimuli of which one is not aware to the influences or effects of stimulus processing of which one is not aware, suddenly the true power and scope of the unconscious in daily life become apparent. Defining the unconscious in terms of the former leads directly to the conclusion that it is dumb as dirt (Loftus & Klinger, 1992), whereas defining it in terms of the latter affords the opinion that it is highly intelligent and adaptive.

With typos, my fingers are not typing non-words, they are typing the wrong words because they are running along sometimes outside of my conscious thoughts.

 

[Planigale]

Agree with most of above. There is good evidence that much of what we regard as being the products of consciousness is sub conscious and merely observed by consciousness.

I had an interesting example the other day someone knocked something off a table, I looked round and my hand had caught it. I was aware of this happening but I was aware as it happened.

 

[Minoosh]

Unfortunately I see POTUS in there.

I see a POS in POTUS.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Posted by Skeptic Ginger: With typos, my fingers are not typing non-words, they are typing the wrong words because they are running along sometimes outside of my conscious thoughts.

I agree with your post. I think it is always so interesting to learn something new about how the brain works and then to internalise that information and accept it as being far better than previous vagueness!

 

[Darat]

...snip...
With typos, my fingers are not typing non-words, they are typing the wrong words because they are running along sometimes outside of my conscious thoughts.

I get this I will be typing and then type the wrong word but I know I am "about" to type the wrong word as I type it! It's a very strange feeling.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I get this I will be typing and then type the wrong word but I know I am "about" to type the wrong word as I type it! It's a very strange feeling.

In my case, my conscious brain is oblivious most to the time until I go back to fix the typos. Hard to say why we type teh instead of the, and sometimes they are actual typos where my fingers hit the key next to the one I meant to hit. But sometimes I look over what I typed and my mind is totally boggled as to how I typed what I actually did.

Like sometimes instead of 'if it' or 'it is', I find I typed 'it it'. What the hell?

 

[bruto]

I recall hearing an article on NPR (Perhaps Science Friday) which talked about decisions being made in the subconscious before the conscious mind is aware. Essentially, that the conscious mind tricks itself into thinking it made the decision.

I think we're all familiar with the "Eureka Effect", where subconscious processing solves knotty problems and feeds us the answer when we're otherwise engaged.

I'm reminded of William James, who observed that we often react before we think, such that, observing something like running from a tiger, one might say we are scared because we run, as the other way around. The point here was that it all happens so fast, often simultaneously, and is so dependent on habit, that we cannot separate them. Skinner took this up and, I think, got it wrong, assigning causality to simultaneity, but that's another subject. We react and feel at the same time, and tend to mis-attribute reaction to feeling, while Skinner mis-attributes feeling to reaction.

DBPC study please.

I suspect that active minds do puzzles, and stay active and alert into old age too. It's selection bias. And biased towards doing brain teasers rather than actual thinking. How is my sister's Sudoku better than me reading and posting here?

I recently heard some podcast now forgotten, in which there was a sensible-sounding division between things that actually prevent Alzheimer's and the like, and things that make it less damaging when it happens. The upshot was that things like puzzles and learning foreign languages and other mental activities do not prevent those physical problems, but that they make it easier to work around them because of the well developed neural pathways. The speaker compared it to coming to a blockage in the road, and having a map of the detours.

As for the sudoku versus the posting, I would suggest (purely in the abstract with no personal or critical intent here) that that probably depends on whether one actually thinks and learns. There are those, alas, for whom a forum is just a podium from which they utter what they already believe, and I doubt their minds are getting any more out of it than a radio talk show snollygoster gets from reading an Obama speech as he clutches his blunt crayon.

The subconscious and automatic part of our minds seems to work more efficiently than the conscious. As a mechanic, how many times have you realized after the bolt shears, the glass breaks, the part drops into the hole, the thread strips, the hole burns through the sheet metal, the part drops on your foot....that your subconscious said "you shouldn't do that" just before you did!

 

[casebro]

In my case, my conscious brain is oblivious most to the time until I go back to fix the typos. Hard to say why we type teh instead of the,....

I do it all the time. I've read that it is because of timing, one hand vs the other. Note the T and E are left hand, H is right hand. And "nad" instead of "and" also. Now I wonder if left handed people ever make "teh", or if they do some other timing mis-move? Does handedness have something to do with the conscious mind ?