[Kilgore Trout]

It's a Jungle in There: Our Brains Are Not As Evolved As We Might Think | Personal Health | AlterNet

Thoughts? Opinions?

An interesting point from the article:

"For example, it takes approximately 500 to 600 milliseconds for our cerebral cortex to process an experience and register it in conscious awareness. By contrast, the amygdala, the core of our fear and attachment circuitry, located in the old-mammalian brain, can react to a potential threat in less than 100 milliseconds. This means that by the time we've become consciously aware of an experience, it's already been processed and reprocessed in the brain's more primitive regions, activating memories and triggering neural patterns generated by past learning. When we finally realize there's a need to take action of some kind, we think we're making a conscious choice, but most likely, the choice has already been made for us by our more primitive brain centers. The brain somehow creates the illusion that we're living in the present moment and are acting with free will based on conscious deliberation, but extensive evidence shows that this isn't the case. So, when we think we're directly experiencing what's going on around us, our conscious awareness is primarily the result of what's already occurred within our brains—fully 90 percent of the input to the cerebral cortex comes from internal neural processing."

 

[thewindlistens]

Um... I don't understand how this implies we're not as evolved as we think.

 

[mrscientist]

You do not understand because your(our) brain is not as evolved as we think. You fail at understanding, my friend. Fail

 

[thewindlistens]

You do not understand because your(our) brain is not as evolved as we think. You fail at understanding, my friend. Fail

I disrespectfully disagree.

 

[mrscientist]

I disrespectfully disagree.

I disagree disrespectfully.

 

[Monte]

Makes sense.

We can afford to be less aware in this day and age.

 

[pmj85]

I lack a great deal of knowledge on the subject matter (I've read a few things here and there) but I find it bloody fascinating none the less.

Is it possible to train the brain to react faster, I wonder? I believe so. Have you ever seen Fight Science? A group of scientists set up a test lab kitted out with the very latest in motion capture, some kind of sensors that er... did stuff, etc. Anyway, they set up a dummy (iirc) with a series of lights attached to it that would blink intermittently in a random order.

Now these figures may be a bit off because I haven't seen it for ages, so bear with me. It took an average person something like 500ms to realise that a light had come on and even more time to react. It took professional martial artists (iirc) less than 100ms to see the light, spring in to action and strike the illuminated area.

I might be on about something completely different here but it looks as though we can train ourselves to become far more aware of the 'now', which is cool

 

[Mutatio NOmenis]

It's only been what, 100 years or so since we invented electricity and the modern world has only been around for a few generations, so we've still got to evolve further. Evolution never ends; it just keeps trying to improve itself.

 

[Abyss Soul]

Indeed this is interesting. But if every conscious choice is decided by the more primitive regions of the brain, then how is it that some people can make irrational decisions that may put them in danger? It is the responsibility of the amygdala to signal the human not to take such risks. Could it be that this is further proof that are brains are not evolved as we think in today's environment?