Deciphering your brain’s secrets

In 2007, a young British woman survived a car accident. In the first five months since parts of her brain were damaged, she only opened her eyes but did not respond to sounds. In neurology jargon, it was diagnosed as vegetative. Imagine the amazement of the scientists when they examined your brain using a type of magnetic resonance imaging that detects the blood flow of the parts that were still active. When they recited phrases, the parties involved in the language were enlightened. When they asked her to imagine visiting her home, the parts that involve memory started to shine, as if they were recognizing the places. And when they asked her to imagine herself playing tennis, her favorite sport, these regions sparked an even greater movement. In fact, despite being different from the healthy people who were studied, the girl seemed to have had moments of awareness.

The report of this case was used to answer part of some questions still studied by cognitive neuroscience. However, some of our most profound discoveries are the correlation between the parts of the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious brain.

The researchers concluded that the subconscious mind works 100% of the time. The subconscious accepts whatever is programmed into it by the conscious mind. From this study, it was concluded that it is not the subconscious that says whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, real or imagined, possible, or impossible. The experts also concluded that, although the two minds act in a complementary way to each other, in human behavior the conscious mind accounts for 12% of the actions and the subconscious 88%.

“Good or bad habits are stored in your subconscious”

The subconscious is that aspect of the mind that takes care of everything you do without having to think about it consciously. All habits are, according to the definition of the Force of Habit, operated by the subconscious mind, as they cannot be managed by the conscious mind. They can be influenced to occur differently by the conscious mind, they are not under its control. Regardless of what caused or influenced them, all habits are performed on the subconscious autopilot. For your mind to work the way you want it to work, you need to understand how it works. Despite being complementary, the conscious and subconscious mind has characteristics that distinguish them from each other. This is useful to understand which one is operating at each moment. These characteristics reveal the inherent nature of each aspect, however, they work perfectly together. For the Habit Force, the conscious mind is thought to be formed by these aspects of our consciousness, while we are waking. When driving your car, for example, you can be consciously aware of the streets and traffic signs if you are trying to find a place you have never been to before. But if you are driving to a usual place, you can be consciously aware only of your thoughts and unconscious, of the streets, signs, traffic, and buildings around you. As long as you are aware of only your thoughts, your subconscious mind is paying attention to other things, including the streets, signs, speed limit, and will indicate to you as soon as you arrive at the destination.

“Your subconscious will always rescue emotions when the trigger for that emotion is triggered by an event, a memory, or an experience.”

Many studies have shown that decisions are made in the subconscious mind before acting consciously. For example, you may have been taught that money doesn’t grow on a tree, so every time you find something you like and even have the opportunity and the money to buy it, you hear an internal voice saying it’s too expensive, or you shouldn’t be spending your money on it. This is how you recognize what your beliefs and values ​​are.

This internal voice comes from your subconscious programming. We all know that smoking is not the best for our health, but instead of being aware of it, the moment we want to smoke, we just act according to our schedule, basically saying that we are going to end the stress of the moment by smoking one cigarette!

Our thoughts have become compulsive because the subconscious is more powerful than the conscious mind. As we identify with programming in the subconscious, it makes it difficult to imagine that we can go beyond thoughts consciously and change anything we desire. Right now, all of our attention is on the subconscious. However, with practice, we can begin to bring more awareness to the emotions in our body, allowing us to stay longer in the present moment and also become more aware of our thoughts and habits.

“Intuition manifests itself in the form of a physical reaction, dream or sensation sent in the form of a message from the subconscious mind.”

The conscious mind cannot manage all the information acquired by your five senses. In one study, the researchers asked the volunteers to play a card game where the goal was to make more money. What they didn’t realize, however, is that the game was manipulated from the start. There were two stacks of cards to choose from; one deck was manipulated to provide big wins followed by big losses, while the other deck was set up to provide small gains, but almost no losses. It took about 50 cards before the volunteers said there was something wrong with the deck and about 80 cards before they could explain the difference between the decks. However, what is most fascinating is that, after just 10 cards, the sweat glands in the palms of the hands opened each time they took a new card. It was also around the tenth card that they began to favor the safer mount, without being aware of what they were doing. In other words, long before the analytical brain could explain what was going on, bodily intuition already knew where there was danger and guided them safely.

Your brain is a powerful tool. Studying its features and understanding its activities will help you to have a healthier and more balanced life, positively influencing your self-confidence, self-esteem, self-sufficiency, and independence.

Source
Wikipedia — concepts and definitions

Book: The Brain Book: Know Your Own Mind and How to Use it — Peter Russell
Book: Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain — Mark F. Bear
Book: How the Brain Connects: to Cognitive & Behavioral Change — Robert Lavine