The 17th-century French philosopher had a famous saying: "I think, therefore I am." As can be seen, consciousness has been a topic of philosophical discussion for a long time. Modern science believes that consciousness emerges from the collaboration of billions of neurons in the brain. But this is still too general. Specifically, how do neurons give rise to consciousness? In recent years, scientists have developed methods and tools that allow for the objective study of this most subjective and personal of things, and with the help of brain-damaged patients, scientists have been able to gain a glimpse into the mysteries of consciousness. In addition to figuring out exactly how consciousness works, scientists also want to know the answer to a deeper question: Why does it exist and how did it originate?
Uncovering the Mysteries of the Unconscious
The World Beyond Conscious Thought Every time you close your office door, a certain melody plays in your head. You always prefer Coke to Pepsi. A certain look on your spouse's face can somehow trigger love or anger in you. Also, the reasons why you married your spouse in the first place seem so unreasonable now.
These all prove that your unconscious is actively playing a role. Although these examples may seem unrelated on the surface, they all reveal another less rational and rich inner world outside of conscious thinking. Long before Freud taught the world that everything we do depends on the mysterious power of memory and emotion, people are now exploring the depths of the mind and the mind anew. Paul Whelan, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: "Most of what we do every moment is unconscious. If everything was at the forefront of consciousness, life would be chaotic."
With advanced neuroimaging technology, questions such as "How do we make hasty decisions?" "Why are we upset by unreasonable decisions?" "What satisfies us?" will soon be answered not by studying someone's childhood The secret is to observe nerve impulses in specific parts of the brain. New research on this topic is published almost every week. Pop culture is so obsessed with neuroscience, hence Malcolm. Gladwell's book "In the Blink of an Eye: The Power of Unconscious Thoughts" has remained on the bestseller list for four weeks.
Most of us would like to accept the idea that we make judgments about things through thoughts that occur somewhere out of reach. But now scientists have discovered the neural connections underlying these thought processes, located in never-appreciated parts of the brain. These parts communicate with other parts, trigger neurotransmissions, and lead to our behavior. Clinton Kiltz, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University, said: "Everything you do, your thoughts, your conscious and unconscious, your daily activities, all have neural codes. Our biggest challenge is to figure out how to study and unravel them. These codes."
This initial understanding of the human unconscious has profound implications for both individuals and the medical community. The realization that human behavior may not be entirely the result of higher rational thinking may shake our belief in certain cherished values, such as free will, the ability to choose, and a sense of responsibility for those choices. We can never control the rhythm of our heart or the activity of our limbic system. However, Gladwell writes, “our momentary judgments and first impressions are reasoned and manipulated… To explain our behavior we must acknowledge that a fleeting thought is as valuable as a long period of rational analysis. ".
Cognitive neuroscientists believe that people are conscious in only about 5% of their cognitive activities, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions and behaviors depend on what is beyond consciousness 95 % of brain activity. From heartbeats to pushing shopping carts to deciding not to harm a litter of kittens, we rely on something called the adaptive unconscious. It's the brain's way of making sense of the world with which our minds and bodies must interact. . Adaptive pieces unconsciously allow us to drive around a street corner without having to use complex calculations to figure out the precise turning angle, car speed and driving radius. It also enables us to understand the correct meaning of ambiguous sentences.
Business Applications of Unconscious Research Gerald Salzman is a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, but he thinks about the conscious level like a neuroscientist. He is also a founding partner of Olson Salzman Associates, a consulting firm that coaches companies to better understand their customers' minds.
As a marketing professor, Saltzman likes to study what makes people buy one thing rather than another. In the field of neuroscience, this gets to the heart of questions about motivation.
In his work to explore customer awareness, Salzman tried to find a way to bypass the often unreliable panel surveys, avoid the interference of irrelevant factors, and learn the true needs of customers. This will make sales and promotion efforts more productive.
He applied for a U.S. patent for this method, which is called "Salzmann Metaphorical Entrainment Technique" (ZMET). The patent certificate describes it as a technology that "develops interconnected structures that influence thought and behavior. ZMET has been used to create messages that elicit responses from 95% of a client's brain because many of the client's choices are It's driven by this part of the brain. It works by capturing those deep metaphors that people unconsciously associate with a product or feeling.
Language is very powerful, Saltzman said. It is limited and cannot be confused with thought itself. But images are a step closer to capturing a fragment of the complex and contradictory world of unconscious feeling. He asked his subjects to draw something that represented their thoughts and feelings about something. Drawings, even if they can't explain why they are drawn that way. Salzman found that when people did so, they often discovered "a profound metaphor placed in a unique situation." He believes, after conducting research around the world, that these unconscious metaphors are. Categories are limited, and metaphors that express emotions like hope and sadness are universal to everyone.
Saltzman found that even metaphors had practical uses when an architecture firm asked him to help design one. The new children's hospital manages to make the hospital environment less unbearable for hospitalized children, their parents and hospital staff. With the help of ZMET technology, children, parents and staff draw the hospital. The researchers then questioned them about the images for nearly two hours, exploring their thoughts, feelings and associations. Although the expressions and emotions varied widely, the core theme emerged. For this children's hospital, the primary metaphor was transformation, and the supporting metaphors were control, communication, and energy.
How these themes are embodied. When the hospital was completed in 2008, patients and families were surrounded by butterflies, a symbol of transformation, and the wards were more like home rooms, giving children some control over their personal space. A large garden, visible from all wards, symbolizes transformation, but also communication and energy. “Before, design was a gamble, and success or failure depended on luck,” said one designer. We now know that the hospital's deepest theme must be about transformation. ”
Of course. Saltzman wasn’t the only one to study customers’ minds. In “In the Blink of an Eye,” Gladwell describes Coca-Cola’s costly mistakes. The Coca-Cola Company The drink's recipe was changed based on data from blindfold taste tests, but "New Coca-Cola" flopped in the market. In fact, despite not being as popular as Pepsi, Coca-Cola remained the leader in soft drinks at the end of Gladwell's book. A new study released later may explain it.
Researchers at Baylor University School of Medicine asked 67 Coca-Cola and Pepsi supporters to choose between them. But when they were blinded, they preferred Pepsi. Three-quarters of people preferred Coca-Cola when they saw the company's logo before drinking it. Researchers scanned the subjects' brains during the test and found that the Coca-Cola logo triggered parts of the brain related to memory and self-image. strenuous activity; and Pepsi, despite tasting better to most people, had little effect on these areas, said Reed Mon of Baylor University's Brown Foundation Human Neuroscan Laboratory when the study was published last October. Tagu explained this: “The Coca-Cola trademark powerfully affects activities in the human brain related to behavioral control – flashes of memories and self-image. "
The key, he said, is that the brain responds in a way that affects behavior." Oddly enough, this reaction has nothing to do with conscious preferences. Initial Awareness of the Unconscious Mind Dogs will come up and sniff you. If he remembers you and he remembers you as a good person, he'll immediately start wagging his tail and maybe giving you a complimentary lick on your wrist.
But it may also avoid you, associate you with food, or bite you quickly. All these impressions, these connections, are triggered by a single sniff. In addition to not walking over to sniff another person, humans are actually the same as dogs in this regard. Dolores, a psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Malaspina said: "A smell is not just a symbol, it includes a wide range of content." He explained that olfactory information is unique because it is one of the five human senses. The only sensory information that does not stop at the brain's relay station - the thalamus - but reaches the anterior cerebral cortex directly. The sense of smell does not need to be relayed or filtered, and it violently impacts the anterior cerebral cortex. Researchers have discovered that, without us even realizing it, our sense of smell plays an important role in choosing a mate. The menstrual cycles of women who live in the same house tend to align because the scent they unconsciously smell activates their endocrine systems. Malasduna said: "Our brains begin to develop in the fetus, but they are destined to give up control to the sense of smell."
But what happens if the sense of smell does not work properly? Malaspina and other researchers are studying the sense of smell in people with mental disorders and have come to some intriguing conclusions. Although schizophrenia is considered a disorder of hallucinations and delusions, one of the more obvious and disruptive symptoms of the disorder is impairment in social interaction. Some patients with schizophrenia cannot understand social cues and cannot handle social relationships. Hallucinations and delusions can be controlled with medication, but underlying social impairment makes it more difficult for patients to cope with daily life.
Research shows that many people with schizophrenia also suffer from "clinically significant olfactory impairment," which involves the parietal lobe (the part of the parietal lobe responsible for synthesizing sensory information to make sense of something, such as taking in social cues or putting them into context). suggesting combined, etc.) dysfunction. Since a breath can immediately evoke a scene at a specific time and place, the lack of this ability will cause a person to lose the basic compromise and emotional support in life. "We are increasingly realizing that smell is a good way to study the unconscious basis of sociability and social interest," Malaspina said.
A brain-damaged patient lies in bed, not completely unconscious , and did not fall into a coma, but the spark of consciousness would only be fleeting, and only subtle movements proved that he or she was still alive or knew that relatives and friends were beside him. In medicine, these patients are said to be in a minimally conscious state. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 Americans are in this situation now.
The journal "Neurology" published a surprising research report: Researchers used MRI equipment to study the brains of two people with the lowest level of consciousness, and then compared them with the brains of seven healthy men and women. The brain compares. Scans showed that the brain activity of minimally conscious patients was less than half that of others. The researchers then played tapes recorded by their family members or friends to the subjects, describing pleasant past events or similar experiences. A minimally conscious patient listened to his sister recalling her wedding and his greeting. The results were striking: all the people scanned, including the least conscious ones, showed similar brain activity, and some also showed activity in their visual cortex.
Despite evidence that the unconscious is widespread in everyday life in both damaged and healthy brains, even an ardent believer in unconscious thinking like Saltzman advises against assuming it. Make a conclusion. “I don’t think we know yet what percentage of thinking is purely rational versus what seems to be purely intuitive thinking.” The balance between the two, the known and the unknown, the conscious and the unconscious, the 5% and the 95%, is what pioneers in the vast and complex world of the mind will continue to explore. But we'll probably never get to the bottom of it. After all, the mystery of consciousness and the mystery of the brain will always be the ultimate mystery of what makes people "human".