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Blunderov
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Who Are You?
« on: 2007-08-07 12:48:16 » |
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[Blunderov] Ever wonder why you did something completely against what you fondly imagined to be the grain of your life?
"I took the tube back out of town
Back to the Rollin' Pin
I felt a little like a dying clown
With a streak of Rin Tin Tin"
The Who - "Who are You?"
strangenews
Greatest Mysteries: Who Are You?
By Melinda Wenner, Special to LiveScience
posted: 07 August 2007 09:13 am ET
Email Editor's Note: We asked several scientists from various fields what they thought were the greatest mysteries today, and then we added a few that were on our minds, too. This article is one of 15 in LiveScience's "Greatest Mysteries" series running each weekday.
You might think you know yourself, but you’re wrong.
Scientists who study how the brain shapes identity and behavior say that we are actually quite unaware of who we really are. Much of what drives our actions and shapes our personality is unconscious.
The nature of consciousness has long baffled psychologists and cognitive scientists, but recent research is bolstering a consensus, said Ezequiel Morsella, a psychologist at Yale University.
If you think of the brain as a set of different computers, each of which performs different complicated tasks and proceduress, consciousness is like the Wi-Fi network that integrates the computers’ activities so that they can work together, Morsella explained.
For example, if you are carrying a hot plate of food to the table, one of your brain’s “computers” will tell you to drop the plate because it’s burning your skin, whereas another will tell you to hold on so the food doesn’t end up on the floor.
The brain requires the “Wi-Fi network” of consciousness so that the different computers can interact, hash things out and determine what you do.
It’s “a physical state that integrates systems in the brain that would otherwise not be integrated,” Morsella said in a telephone interview.
More than meets the mind
So when it comes to our actions, consciousness really just skims the surface. Most of what drives what we do is embedded in neural networks not readily accessible by conscious thought, said Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at New York University.
“The intuitive everyday idea about the sense of self and its control over behavior is as incorrect as the idea that the earth is flat,” Morsella agreed. Although we think of ourselves as independent agents, we’re not. Everything we do is influenced by unconscious processes and our environment, he added.
For instance, while we can be aware of some of our urges, we are often unaware of the processes that created them. “My eye may have scanned a picture of a hamburger in a magazine, and then a few minutes later, I have this urge,” Morsella said. “We’re unaware of the evolutionary sources of a lot of behavior.”
Other times, we’re not even aware of the urges. Research has shown, for instance, that compared to what would be expected by chance alone, more men named “Ken” move to live in Kentucky and more “Florences” move to live in Florida; more men named “Dennis” become dentists and more “Lauras” become lawyers.
According to John Bargh, a psychologist at Yale University, these surprising findings are most likely the result of our evolutionary-driven attraction to things similar to us—an urge stemming from the idea that we should mate with people who resemble us because they are more likely to share our genes and help to propel them into the next generation.
Most people, of course, are unaware of ever having such urges. “It is clearly an unconscious influence, as no one would claim name-letter overlap as a reason for making these important life choices,” Bargh wrote of the findings.
Understanding ourselves
Given the limited role that conscious thought plays in shaping behavior and personality, and the complexity of all the other systems that influence us, it’s not easy to understand how we become the people we become.
Most brain research today focuses on how individual systems work, but perhaps science needs to approach the brain in a different way—by designing experiments to tease out the activity of multiple systems at once, said LeDoux.
“We need to understand how information processed by many systems, both conscious and unconscious, simultaneously determines how we think, act and feel, and more generally, how we are who we are,” he told LiveScience.
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Walter Watts
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Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
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Re:Who Are You?
« Reply #1 on: 2007-08-07 15:14:44 » |
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Quote from: Blunderov on 2007-08-07 12:48:16
[Blunderov] Ever wonder why you did something completely against what you fondly imagined to be the grain of your life?
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Hello Blunderov.
Enjoyed your post.
This is only slightly related I believe, but it gave me some insights into how our subconscious interacts with our conscious awareness with exquisite subtlety.
It happened several years ago and really caught my attention.
I was retrieving my wallet in the middle of the day, which I keep
on top of my dresser. My cologne is also on top of the dresser. However, I
had yet to shower or shave, which always precedes the application of
my cologne when, while thinking about other things, I reached up and put a splash
of cologne on. I had NO intention of doing that at that particular moment.
It was not the right time. I had not showered yet. It was a misfire.
This neuronal "readiness-to-fire" pattern took clues from my
environment, detected a pattern, started a spike toward its threshold,
and got no other input until it was too late.
The event really illuminated the subtlety which defines the boundaries between our conscious awareness, our subconscious processes and the environment.
Walter
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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Re:Who Are You?
« Reply #2 on: 2007-08-07 18:02:46 » |
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[Blunderov] Hello there Walter 
I once discovered my toothbrush, which had been missing for some while, stashed in the freezer. Must have "put it away" ...
The Politburo always removes her seatbelt when about a kilometre or so away from home quite without intending to. In her mind she is at home already.
Best Regards .
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