My Two Brains
A few years ago, I tried to work out how my brain was working. I could not puzzle the internal workings of my brain and how thoughts and processes were occurring. I found that I did not ‘know’ what words I was going to type next until they were typed. I did not know what words I was going to say next until they left my mouth. It appeared that I knew what I had said because I had heard what I had said. It is as if thoughts were generated. Those thoughts were then converted to language and came out as words. I could modify the way I said things. I could instruct: “Do not swear.” As I type, I can recognize that I am ‘mouthing’ the words and something is telling my fingers to move in specific patterns. It is very noticeable when people walk by this outdoor cafe as the typing continues as my brain weighs up the persons walking past. Males are weighed up for threat value and competition. Females are weighed up similar to that television series — ‘Snog Marry Avoid’! I have checked with other males, and they agree. The instant analysis in the subconscious is to be expected when considering the animal kingdom. Animals with no neocortex, evaluate other animals for threat value. Animals of the same species evaluate for ‘mating opportunities’. It is appropriate to expect the same behaviour in humans.
I puzzled that my thinking operated on a single topic at a time like a single core computer. If I am interrupted with a subsequent question, I put the contents of the first problem into temporary memory and concentrated on the new question. I then brought the first question back out of temporary memory into my main thinking area. However, it is possible that the retrieved information is incomplete. My thinking is best done in a ‘non-interruptive’ environment.
I just stopped and watched the leaves and their movement in the gentle breeze. There are three females on tables near me and they certainly get more attention than males on other tables. This makes sense as a quick analysis of the animal kingdom tells us that the only demand on male animals is to chase females. Most of the males in the animal kingdom have no neocortex. Almost all animals operate on ‘reptile brain’ or less.
I found that I could not remember the thinking processes but I found that I could monitor the thinking process. Most thinking processes I recognized seem to be connected with me mouthing words internally somewhat like talking to myself inside my brain. Language appears to be needed for rational thought inside my brain.
We have only had speech for seventy thousand years [1]. How did we think before the invention of language? French people tell me that they think in French. We think in the language of our origin. Do the French think differently to the English speakers? Some languages are harsh and some are smooth and gentle. Is there a difference in thinking processes? Some languages like Chinese have limited characters. Our alphabet has typically twenty-six characters forming close to an infinity of words. Do regions with limited characters have more straightforward thinking. In English, we have so many ways of saying something like: “No”. Does this influence thinking? I am a mathematician. ‘Yes’ is ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ is ‘No’. I recognize that uncertainty can be added to the answer. I recognise that an answer may have both yes and no as an answer.
My neocortex is my brain where I talk to myself in English. This is the brain that thinks that I am me. This brain feels line a brain that is functioning above my existence as a body. It recognises things and makes decisions, yet it is not the only thing happening brain wise. As I walk down a compressed snow pavement in Irkutsk in January, a foot went suddenly sideways. Snow had melted on a poorly insulated roof and run across the pavement to make the surface into treacherous smooth damp ice with significantly less grip than the packed snow. Without time to ‘think’, my other foot reacted to regain balance. My hands swung to transfer weight. The action involved mass transfer and momentum in some difficult to comprehend formula. This action took place before my neocortex knew what was happening. Something is controlling my body and it is way faster than my neocortex. We developed from a reptile. The reptile has no neocortex. The reptile has not conscious thought. The reptile operates entirely using it’s ‘reptile brain’. We have the same reptile brain. It is a full operating system to coordinate every component of our body. It knows exactly how to squeeze our intestines to move and mix the contents. It knows to control the rate of lung movement for breathing. You can hold your breath using your neocortex for quite an extended time. Then your reptile brain issues an edict and the neocortex looses control whence breathing resumes. I fell off my motorcycle two weeks ago whilst track racing at supermoto. I slid along the tarmac then rolled a few times as I moved onto the dirt. I was a bit winded but I felt no hurt. I got up and walked to the waiting ambulance. They poked and prodded and said I was basically ok with no breakages. Two days later, the pain started. I still feel pain in my hip. For most of two weeks, I had difficulty doing up my buttons and tying my shoe laces. I still feel discomfort in my left wrist as I type this. This tells me that the pain is not generated at the injury area but is generated in the reptile brain to create an ‘unpleasant pain’ in the region of the damage. I came to that conclusion because amputees report feeling itches in their missing limbs. I recognise that the reptile brain somewhere at the top of our neck operates in an entirely different manner to our neocortex. Our two brains operate in entirely different manners and do not communicate well. If shall tell you to pick up the glass in front of you and take a drink. Your neocortex evaluates my instruction. Your neocortex accepts the challenge. Your neocortex issues an instruction: “Lift glass. Take drink.” The activity then occurs. Which hand did you use? How did you decide which hand to use? How tight did you squeeze the glass? Which muscles were tensed and by how much? How much did you tilt the glass? What size mouthful did you take? What muscles were activated to swallow? You will have no recollection of the complex computations required to take this drink. If somebody lifts the glass for you, you are very apprehensive as they tilt the glass.
I occasionally get a painful cramp condition in one foot. I entered a formal massage place in Vietnam to enjoy a foot massage. I was ensured that it might cure the cramp. The massage involved agony as she pushed this blunt item into the sole of my foot. She giggled at my suffering. I found I could only bear the pain if I my face became contorted in an expression of pain. If I tried to hide the expression, the pain was unbearable. If I tried to relax such that I was not controlling my face, my face became contorted with a pain expression. I could not tolerate the pain without the facial expression. This tells me that our primary means of expression is our face.
‘Lynn’ inflicting pain. Photo: Andy Chalkley
Humans are exceptional in our ability to think and act in ways that exceed other animals. Please do not forget that modern human abilities have origins in our evolutionary history. The mammal developed from the reptile. The reptile has no neocortex. The reptile has a reptile brain. Humans have a reptile brain. This reptile brain operates in the same way as the brain in the reptile. It controls all bodily functions. It is the operating system for the entire body. If we get a bump on the head and our neocortex brain plays up, we still breath, pump blood, walk, operate muscles, eat. Out logic, speech, and decision making disappear.
If I am stuck to make a decision, like what to say when I meet somebody, I don’t think about it much, as I know my reptile brain will instinctively give an answer. I just have to mollify the proposed action so that I don’t do or say something stupid.
The scientists in white coats commonly claim there are three brains. They commonly add an intermediary unit called the “limbic system“. American neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean in the 1960s believed that the limbic system was responsible for the motivation and emotion involved in feeding, reproductive behaviour, and parental behaviour. I cannot detect this unit in action. My logic also says that reptiles feed, reproduce, and parent. So, I believe this is actually part of the reptile brain. The scientists in white coats claim there is activity detected when certain emotions are activated. I believe that the limbic system is a translation area. The limbic system likely translates emotions generated in the reptile brain into feelings that can be detected by the neocortex. I claim the reptile brain and the neocortex brain operate in entirely different manners with no commonality in function, internal language, or purpose. The limbic system provides some transmission between the two but it is not like the instructional messages we expect in our technological environment. The transfer is via ‘feelings’. If my reptile brain says I need to eat, it gives me tummy rumbles that distract me from writing this essay. I then push something into my mouth that passes visual acceptability to make the annoying sensation go away. If my eyes see an ‘interesting female’, my subconscious ceases all other activity and tells me to concentrate all activity with the information: ‘Interesting female in the vicinity’. Luckily, I was brought up to cooperate in society and regulate such thoughts. I like to scare myself in small ways. I have just looked over the parapet in this shopping centre. A flutter of fear went through my chest. I instinctively held the rail.
Globus, Kiev, Ukraine. Photo: Andy Chalkley
If you pause a moment from reading this, you should be able to detect logical and illogical thoughts being generated in your neocortex. You should also be able to detect a mild kaleidoscope of minor emotions creating mild feelings coming from your subconscious (your reptile brain.) Somebody just ran past. I heard the foot patter and the jingle of the coins in his pocket. I then felt the wind from his passing. I didn’t get much of a flutter as I know I am in a safe place. There is a group of about twenty youths at this shopping centre in Kyiv, Ukraine. They look like they will soon be of military age when a nations state will send them to be shot by the youths of the next country. One girl is thumping a boy on the arm with gusto. He has been well trained by his mother to not retaliate. He does no more than raise his arm to stop facial contact and takes the blows on his arm. He does not move away. In the woke West, she is likely to be thumped back. Such graciousness is no longer given to girls.
If you monitor your thinking, you should be able to detect illogical thought generation in the neocortex, in a fashion where you talk to yourself in English. You should also be able to detect strange body feelings like impulsive twitches. The reptile brain does not use logic nor language. It only communicates with ‘you’ in the neocortex with feelings. It is also communicating with your heart, muscles, and every component of your body in a manner in which you cannot detect. It give you an itch in the back so you scratch it. It controls your tongue in a miraculous manner that you do not bite your tongue whilst eating. I find that amazing. The subconscious makes you unpleasant when cold. It makes you sweat when warm. It raises your sex parts when appropriate. Almost none of these things can you command with willpower. I cannot make myself sweat. I cannot make myself shiver. I cannot write with my left hand. If I say to my arm: “Rise”, it rises. If I say to my penis: “Rise”, it does nothing! A girl has more power over those parts than I do. Interestingly, during sex, we actually completely lose control for a period of time.
The shopping centre in Kyiv, Ukraine has just blacked out. I think they have switched to an emergency generator.
Here is an edited explanatory quote: “Our ‘reptile brain’ thinks in terms of immediate survival, acting automatically to maintain life through instinctual, reactive, and rigid patterns. It operates 24/7, prioritizing safety, bodily functions, including breathing and heart rate along with feeding, fighting, and reproducing.” A key word is ‘automatically’. This means that the reptile brain operates without notification to the neocortex. You only know you are breathing because you can ‘feel’ it. You only know your heart is pumping because you can feel it. You cannot detect the activity in your reptile brain but you can randomly ‘feel’ the effects of its automatic actions. The task is to be mindful of these minor feelings. I had a condition a few decades ago called ‘diverticulitis’. I had half a metre of large intestine removed. The pain was beyond bearable. I was on morphine after the operation. I have to keep well hydrated. We only get a mild thirst feeling if the reptile brain says: “Drink”. I have to use extra commonsense to drink more when on dry windy conditions, in airplanes, or when exercising in warm conditions. Riding motorcycles in warm conditions was possibly contributary. The automatic thirst generator of the reptile brain is inadequate to look after my hydration in many situations and worse so with half a metre of intestine missing. My subconscious signals and subconscious brain activity do not signal me to keep adequately hydrated. If I have any hint of need for liquid, I rectify it using neocortex logic.
Whilst asleep last night, my phone gave a beep. I distinctly remember a shock feeling and I believe a shudder went through my body. I became awake enough to check my surroundings. I satisfied myself that there was no concern and went back to sleep. I guess that my subconscious is still monitoring my surroundings through sound and perhaps through touch. Light may call me to wake. This is all happening whilst I think my brain is asleep.
Thinking more, I cannot detect any activity in my reptile brain. It acts automatically. I can only detect some of the signals it sends out by the effect that it has on my body. I can detect increased heart rate and increased breathing when climbing stairs. I am getting plenty of that in Kiev, Ukraine as many escalators are switched off due to the mutual destruction of energy systems in a stupid war that seems to have no greater purpose than killing more Christians. If my reptile brain senses danger, it gives me a shock and shudder. I’ll just look over this parapet again to get another shudder. If the reptile in me thinks I should eat food, it gives me an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. This has a strange characteristic. If I don’t eat from early evening until I wake, I don’t immediately feel hungry. Apparently, our reptile brain gives us a sugar hit in the morning. It is why I avoid anything with sugar and carbohydrate in the morning. Bacon and eggs only is my standard breakfast with black decaf coffee without sugar. Often, I can leave it an hour or two before I have the bacon and eggs. I survive a couple of hours on a decaf Americano. The hunger sensation is clearly not like the fuel gauge on a car. I need to lose ten kilograms so that I can accelerate faster on my race motorcycle. I do not need more food even though my reptile brain signals me to search for food urgently. Interestingly, if I am in the midst of interesting items or interesting females, my hunger disappears. The reptile brain appears to prioritize reproduction over food.
Try monitoring all the signals originating from your reptile brain. It is fascinating. When persons suggest that they get feared or worried, I commonly say: “Enjoy the fear.” I am suggesting that you monitor the sensation and the influence that the ‘fear’ sensation has on you. You may then be able to harness it rather than let it dominate. When on the start line of a motorcycle race, I often look at each of the other riders and tell myself: “I can beat them”, often with a few expletives. I am transported into another world as I lurch forward and head for the first corner and refuse to apply my brakes until absolutely essential. Laying over at forty five degrees with the toes touching the tarmac with other bikes almost touching me is another world. Into the second corner is equally important. I am often first to the second corner and I know other faster riders will dive bomb me from underneath or the outside. I rarely win but I give the younger riders a run for their money. The excitement in the pits after a race is amazing as the few minutes of track time are analyzed with animated voices. Most of the action on the track is instinctual. There is simply not enough time for the neocortex to analyze situations. The neocortex can do little more than monitor. You simply cannot rely on your neocortex to make decisions quickly. It is why we must have rigid training regimes so that actions become embedded in the faster acting reptile brain. Herein, may lie a clash with those in white coats. I cannot be sure where these memorized action responses are stored. They certainly seem to be memorized into my reptile brain. I cannot be convinced that the animals called reptiles do not learn and remember certain learned actions. Formally, it is considered that the reptile inherits all its skills just as we inherit our subconscious skills. Nobody had to teach you how to breath. Nobody taught you how to move food with your tongue. I had to be taught to talk and write and more recently, type. Interestingly, these three skills are embedded in my brain and are difficult to alter. Try making a signature with your other hand! This keyboard has Thai characters, but my fingers know the keys.
To connect to the internet in this Kiev cafe, I chose ‘Доступ в Інтернет’ because the third word had a similarity to ‘Internet’. My neocortex worked that our.
My neocortex brain is something of a miracle. I travel the world and visit many places. I don’t remember street names but I can find my way around previously visited cities. I get distances wrong, but I generally get the direction correct. I get off the train in Kiev. The main platform stairs are locked because air raid. I see other walking. There is no bridge so we must use a tunnel. Escalator not working due to electricity shortage. I do not have bearings. Phone esim appears to register on the network ‘UA-Kyivstar’. Google maps not working. Still showing Kharkiv Passazhirskiy. Left or right? Right has more destinations. More people are turning right than left. Right has lower platform numbers. I decide to turn right. Everything in Ukrainian language. I see a large ‘M’ sign. I guess metro. I cannot understand the ticket machine. I look at turnstiles. I see Visa and Mastercard logos. Rub my Wise card and a green light flashes. I think I am in. I go down the vastly long escalator that still has wooden steps. Immaculate art deco ceilings. I enter a grandiose Soviet decorated hall with frescos of ‘happy’ workers. Google not working. Google blue dot is lost — probably due to air raid causing Google to be scrambled. It is disconcerting when Google is out of action. I am now back to old school navigation like the Boy Scout of my youth. I am south of the city, so the direction with more stations is probably appropriate. One name (Унiверситет) looks like Universytet. The next name is Театральна (Teatralna) which I remember from a previous visit. I believe it means theatre as the opera theatre is nearby. I should be able to walk to Globus from there as I don’t know the name of my station. Metro maps don’t match street maps and the wording is in Ukrainian characters. At Kiev station metro, there were more people than could fit onto the platform. This looked dangerous as the occasional train would arrive at speed with the platform jammed with people. I was so close that I people were pressed into me on all sides. I struggled to lift may arm to scratch my nose. Ukraine does not have the fruit-cakes on illegal and legal mood modifying drugs as in the rest of the West. I don’t feel that somebody will push me onto the tracks. There is a uniform togetherness in Ukraine and Russia that is becoming rare in the West. This is something that you can only pick up by instinct not logic. I have no fear walking through dim subways at night in Ukraine and Russia. On the platform, people let women with children have priority even when all pushed into each other. After about eigh trains, I was moving again but we were so close on the train, I could not move my arms and we swayed as the carriage accelerated and braked. Old Soviet metro trains are violent in their acceleration and braking. The driver only seems to have stop and go controls. I have memory of the road layout near my chosen hostel but not the street or location names. I eventually got internet in the magnificent Globus underground shopping centre by clicking ‘Доступ в Інтернет’. I felt at home. I felt peace come over me. The exciting transport challenge of the day was over. Unfortunately, the hostel was not where it was located on Booking.com. The hostel was back close to Teatralina. They had sent a message not yet seen. I booked an old Soviet style hotel next to Globus and sent a scornful email to the hostel for deceptive conduct and notified Booking.com of my annoyance. I told you this so you could follow the procedures that my brain went through to get from a Kharkiv hotel to a Kiev hotel without using English and without the aid of Google maps and with a failed eSim internet connection. I cursed myself for not downloading offline maps. However, I cannot sit and cry. I have to conquor the situations as they arise. To add to the issues, it was minus twelve centigrade in Kharkiv. Worse was Kiev at minus four centigrade. At minus four air temperature, the packed snow may melt at the surface due to sunlight causing the most slippery surface know to mankind. (Mankind had always meant all persons. It was accepted by women because they wanted men to take the responsibility for every issue.)
I wish you to analyze the activity of your neocortex, so I have given you a thinking scenario of one day in the travels of Andy Chalkley. Although, I mostly used neocortex to navigate from war torn Kharkiv to energy restricted Kiev, I went through a kaleidoscope of emotions that took another day to bring calm to my thinking body. In analysing your brain activity, you should detect that some of the activity is neocortex and some is the results of reptile brain action. The neocortex tends to have illogic, logic, and English language as you talk to yourself. The reptile subconscious is not felt as it is fully automatic. You simply notice the results of activity actions. All writing I find on this subject appear muddled. The emotion of fear creates an unpleasant feeling through your torso. The emotion of anxiety creates an uneasy feeling through your torso. The emotion of happiness creates a feeling of peace and calm through your torso. The emotion of love creates a feeling of tightness in the upper torso associated with the area containing the lungs and heart. The heart rate may increase causing us to believe that love comes from the heart area.
‘Fox’ in a quiet Russian cafe. Photo: Andy Chalkley
My brain remembers thousands of faces. I walk into places and people recognise me from previous visits. The neocortex is not remembering as numbers and words as in a computer but is recognizing shapes, patterns, and faces. The volume of information is simply outstanding. A few people in Kiev recognised me from a previous trip even though I did not recognise them. They recounted items about me that confirmed that they knew me. I did recognise some if I looked and listened to them say a few things about themselves. I recognised the hotel receptionist girl when she talked of her studies. She has relations in Russia, so the war is interesting in that the residents of the nations have relatives in the enemy nation!
I have not managed to work out how this information is stored and catalogued. I am a computer consultant. Computer data is held in a manner that can be searched. In the early days of departments moving from paper to computer, I would not allow somebody to abbreviate ‘helicopter’ to ‘hc’. There is no way I could find a lost image if it was called 2001jan1_hc.jpg . It must be 2001-01-01_helicopter.jpg . This date format matches numbers where the big part is at the start. The images sit in chronological order. We do not order our thoughts in this manner. We do not hold a flat image of somebody’s face. The face seems to be held as what I call an ‘icon-image’. If I say: “Mother” to you, and icon-image appears at the front of your brain representing your mother. There will be an emotion tied to this icon-image your like or dislike of the person. Smell may be attached. Movement may be involved in the icon-image. There may be smile or other communication. A wave of emotion will possibly go through you. If I say: “Food”, an icon-image for food appears. It may be a kaleidoscope of food type items. It may not be a clear image of one food item. Emotions will accompany the icon-image. A train of food-though thinking may occur for a few seconds as you go into a suspended pause. I am thinking that we think in icon-images. If you think of a precious person in your life, your mind may go into a series of peasant emotional games for a few moments. That reminds me of a few lines from ‘Porridge’ with Ronnie Barker:
Dreams is your escape. There’s no locked doors. There’s no barriers. There’s no front desk. Yes. Dreams is freedom.
Pause your reading for a while. Say words to yourself. Anything that jogs memory:
- holiday
- food
- girl
- boy
- stairs
- work
- numerous other items.
What occurs in your brain after you mentally say each one? What memory processes occur? Are emotional activities included? Is it a static image or a moving kalaiescope? How long does this continue? One blogger writes: “The details of internal experience seem to vary widely between people, but it’s easy to assume it’s the same as our own.” I certainly think in icon-images. I am not sure that all my thinking is in icon-images. When writing this, I don’t know what I have written until I read it on the screen or taken mental note of the wording I formulated causing my fingers to move. Irrespective, it is fun trying to puzzle what is going on in my neocortex. The neocortex seems to deal with rational and irrational thoughts and a cocktail of minor emotions tied in from the reptile brain. I appear to have partial control over my neocortex and no control over my subconscious reptile brain. However, as in the Porridge comment: “Dreams is your escape. There’s no locked doors. There’s no barriers. There’s no front desk. Yes. Dreams is freedom.”, I can prompt my subconscious into different thought pattern by thinking of past holidays, past relationships, or dreams of what could happen. As people walk past this department store cafe in Kiev, my brain automatically works out items about them. Threat does not take precedence as is is an upmarket department store. But my brain automatically works out their station in life and their current activity. The waiter is a bit gaumless. He has dropped things twice whilst clearing up. He wipes the table in straight lines, which is my style but he fails to wipe under the edge of the table which is where all the sticky drips gather. I have just decided that I add fake blonde hair to my dislikes along with fake breasts, tattoos, fake mannerisms and all things fake.
Hopefully, you now comprehend your reptile brain a little better. Now consider what is happening in your neocortex. You have direct access to your neocortex as that is the part of the brain that thinks you are you. Reptiles and all the animals before reptiles have no neocortex. They operate on what we call the reptile brain or on lesser brains. The reptile does not know that it is a reptile. The reptile operates on instinct. It is assumed that this instinct is inherited. This would make the adaption of the species very slow. Reptiles wait ,for genetic modification in offspring to adapt to changing environment. In the mammal brain, we can teach our young procedures for survival in hostile environments. I will give an example. Humans clearly developed in a place that was temperate. If we developed in a cold climate, we would be hairy like a bear. As youth of teenage years moved to colder climes, they learned to use the skins taken from other animals to keep warm. They could no longer walk outside and eat some bananas. They learned to grow food and developed methods to store food through the winter months. I do notice that people from colder regions tend to be organized. They have to be organized to survive bad weather. Your neocortex brain allows you to be rapidly trained to face your environment. Training takes a significant part of your life.
Reptiles modified to obtain a neocortex turning into mammals. You can directly detect the activity in your neocortex as it is the brain that thinks it is you. Your subconscious is a full operating system to control all activity in your body. Your neocortex was provided later and allows illogical thought, logical thought, the ability to monitor the activities of your reptile brain, and have some influence over the operation of your body. It does not have full control over your body. We think of the neocortex as logical, but it generates constant illogical thoughts. We are trained to ignore to the point of embarrassment the illogical thoughts and filter out the logical thoughts. We seem to do that to different degrees.
When I say you have direct access to your neocortex, I demonstrate a fault. It is like saying your neocortex has access to your neocortex. In this process, your neocortex is assessing how your neocortex is functioning. It is still a valuable process.
Can you control your neocortex? I am not sure. I can certainly modify my mental environment and feed it pleasant thoughts. I can encourage interaction with others.
Glass dome in Globus shopping mall, Kiev. Photo: Andy Chalkley
I just looked at these bird sculptures and puzzled how they were attached to the joints of the dome structure. I turned to the person on the next table, and without self interrogation, asked how he thought the birds were tied to the roof. It scares me to think how it was done. Please note that I did not hesitate to ask the person. I have previously permanently decided that questions ‘off topic’ are interesting to strangers and they invariably interact with interest. You may notice that the engineer in me wondered how they were put up there, rather than the aesthetics.
Here is a blog answer on how we store data in the brain:
What you might need to understand is the mental level, which was the level Freud explored a hundred and more years ago.
The implications of Freud’s elucidation of what he called the System Unconscious – and what I write here is the development of this seminal work by psychoanalysts ever since up to the present – is that the day-job of the unconscious mind is to continuously link mental material in exquisite chains of ‘association’. By association I mean that unlike the conscious mind, that links more specific mental ‘objects’ to create cause and effect narrative chains (“I went to the corner shop to buy bread for our breakfast and . . . “) , the Unconscious links mental objects (images, thoughts, feelings, language, ideas, other stuff) by ingenious similarities – appearance, sound, colour, visual shape, size, unconscious elements not available to the conscious mind, and much more. These chains are condensed in that links can have many overlapping similarities like multi-meaning ‘puns’ that conflate several objects at once.
The effect of this continuous linking seems to be to render the mental material suitable for storage in what we call memory, and confers symbolic resonance to it (allowing one mental object to be used to reference or stand in for another mental object). It is presumably this prodigious mental linking (as realized in the physical brain) that facilitates data retrieval via the process of fairly rapid association, much as we marvel at the idea of six degrees of separation in the macro human ‘community’. [Joe Jacobs]
Here is another:
I’d like to see a study on this but my hypothesis is that people that journal every day free up space for new information. Most people who journal write about the mundane and the day-to-day. That seems to give their brain an excuse to forget that stuff. It is like your brain is say “hey, this is written down. Now there is a good backup. I can forget it.” So the act of writing things down allows your brain a big opportunity to forget … and learn new things.
Another claims:
It gets stored according to the senses involved.
I’m not really interested in neurons and physical location in the brain. I’m interested how my brain is working so I can handle issues and situations better. I wonder if we save items as icon-images. If I think: “coffee”, I may get a flashback of coffee beans or my common coffee mug or my common coffee location. It may be like a picture strip of different coffee items from beans to cafés. It will also contain the smell of coffee and an emotion containing the feeling of joy of drinking coffee. We are not holding information as in a computer in the form of numbers or words or one-dimensional photos with simple word labels. Remember the eye does not take photographs, it creates a three dimensional image that moves in time. The retina with support from some part of your brain is effectively creating a three-dimensional video. We are possibly holding information in the form of icon-images that contain three-dimensional moving images that contain smell, emotion and possibly more. I once recognised an old female friend in a yoghurt shop in Beijing whilst she was looking the opposite direction. How does my brain manage to identify somebody amongst thousands from a mane of hair without seeing the face. I waited a moment for her to turn before I confirmed that it was her. That incident has regularly puzzled me.
It is clear that we do not know how the information is stored from a biological point of view and that you will never know how the information is stored from a practical point of view. What we must recognise is that it is stored in a complex manner that include emotional factors.
Another blogger comments:
The details of internal experience seem to vary widely between people, but it’s really easy when we never see anyone else’s to just assume it’s the same as our own. [noggin-scratcher]
I cannot be confident that the way you organise items in your mind is the same as the way I organise items. The blogger continues:
I’ve heard of people with extremely vivid mental imagery, bordering on voluntary hallucination with their imagination overlaying the real visual field with full-detail fully-realistic moving images. [noggin-scratcher]
Which is close to what I suggested with storage of icon-images that are three-dimension and contain associated emotions. Podgrass reports a similar observation:
I usually conjure up an image in my head if it’s a person, place or thing. When you mentioned “apple” a picture of one was right there for me to reference. When I write, I sort of hear the phrases as I’m thinking about what to type. Same with sounds. If I know a song well, I can “hear” it, or at least parts of it from memory. Individual instruments, voices, etc. Sometimes I can “feel” a memory of something I’ve touched as well. Not so great at tastes or smells though.
Spareparticus claims: ” I can rotate a 3D object any way.” CuriousExpression boasts: “Same here, I can disassemble and reassemble things in my head too.” IntrepidAd says: “It’s not as vivid as actually looking at an apple but it’s definitely there as a visual thing.” In other words, Spareparticus and CuriousExpression are visualizing in three dimension. WhatThen adds:
I can visualise in my head. Like for instance if someone says green apple, I can see in my head, a green apple in 3D. I can interact with it, turn it around, and even make it behave in ways an actual Apple won’t behave, like for instance twist it, or melt it.
I’m an architect, so it helps to have a rendering engine in my head.
Ltz says: “I can even make a fast paced edit of an object in my mind if I want to, with visual effects and all.” BrownNomadic adds: “I can think in video.” ShaddowSpren tells:
It becomes annoying at times though when I see conversations in pictures then have to translate my thoughts into actual words. I have a clear picture but to turn it into something I can communicate to someone else can be a lot of work!
BobBobBerson adds:
I can ‘see’ it sort of behind my eyes, in the middle of my brain? It can be a very clear image but for me it’s not quite as clear as the real thing.
The aim of this chapter was not to tell you how your brain is working but to help you understand how your brain is working in a practical way that can help you to use it as a tool for the benefit of yourself and others around you.
[1] Some say one-hundred-thousand years. The evidence is difficult without the written word!