Analysis:
Consciousness comes from the cooperation of hundreds of millions of neurons in the brain. But this is still too general. Specifically, how do neurons produce consciousness?
/kloc-French philosophers in the 0 th and 7 th centuries have a famous saying: "I think, therefore I am." It can be seen that consciousness has always been a topic of philosophical discussion. Modern science believes that consciousness comes from the cooperation of hundreds of millions of neurons in the brain. But this is still too general. Specifically, how do neurons produce consciousness? In recent years, scientists have found some methods and tools to study this most subjective and personal thing objectively, and with the help of patients with brain injury, scientists can get a glimpse of the mystery of consciousness. In addition to finding out how consciousness works, scientists also want to know the answer to a deeper question: why does it exist and how does it originate?
Unveil the mystery of the subconscious mind
The world beyond conscious thinking. Every time I close the office door, there is always a melody in my mind. You always prefer Coca-Cola to Pepsi. A certain expression on your spouse's face will inexplicably stimulate your love or anger. Also, the reason why you married your spouse at the beginning seems so unreasonable now.
All these prove that your unconscious is playing a positive role. Although these cases seem unrelated on the surface, they all reveal another irrational and rich inner world besides conscious thinking. Freud made the world realize a long time ago that what we do depends on mysterious memory and emotional power, and now people are beginning to explore the depth of thinking and mind. Paul Whelan, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, said: "Most of our actions at any time are unconscious. If everything is at the forefront of consciousness, life will fall into chaos. "
With the development of neuroimaging technology, questions such as "How do we make hasty decisions", "Why do we feel uneasy about unreasonable decisions" and "What makes us satisfied" will soon be answered, not by studying the secrets of someone's childhood, but by observing nerve impulses in specific parts of the brain. New research in this field is published almost every week. Pop culture is so fascinated by neuroscience that Malcolm. Gladwell's book Blink: The Power of Unconscious Thinking has been on the bestseller list for four weeks in a row.
Most of us are willing to accept the idea that we judge things by thinking in a distant place. But now scientists have discovered the neural connections of these thinking processes, which are located in parts of the brain that have never been paid attention to. These parts communicate with other parts, triggering nerve transmission and leading to our behavior. Clinton Kiltz, a professor of psychology and behavioral science at Emory University, said, "All your actions, thoughts, consciousness and unconsciousness, as well as your daily activities, have neural codes. Our biggest challenge is to find out how to study and solve these codes. "
No matter for individuals or medical circles, the preliminary understanding of human unconsciousness is of far-reaching significance. Human behavior may not be entirely the result of advanced rational thinking, which may shake our faith in some precious values, such as free will, the ability to choose and the sense of responsibility for these choices. We can never control our heartbeat rhythm or the activity of the limbic system. However, Gradwell wrote, "Our immediate judgment and first impression are reasonable and manipulated ... In order to explain our behavior, we must admit that an instant thought has the same value as a long-term rational analysis".
Cognitive neuroscientists believe that people are conscious only in about 5% of cognitive activities, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions and behaviors depend on 95% of brain activities outside of consciousness. From heartbeat, pushing a shopping cart to deciding not to hurt a litter of kittens, we rely on something called "adaptive unconsciousness", which is the way for the brain to understand the world with which our mind and body must communicate. Unconscious adaptation allows us to find out the accurate turning angle, speed and driving radius without complicated calculation when turning. It can also help us understand the correct meaning of ambiguous sentences.
Gerald Salcman is an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, but he thinks about consciousness like a neuroscientist. He is also one of the founding partners of Olson Salkman Colleague Consulting Co., Ltd., which guides enterprises to better understand customers' ideas. As a marketing professor, Salkman likes to study what motivates people to buy one thing instead of another in the field of neuroscience, which directly touches the core of motivation.
In the work of exploring customer awareness, Salkman tried to find a way to go beyond the often unreliable sample group survey, avoid the interference of irrelevant factors, and learn to grasp the real needs of customers. This will make the sales and promotion work more effective.
His method, called "Salkman Metaphorical Seduction" (ZMET), has been patented in the United States. The patent certificate describes it as a "technology that produces related structures that affect thoughts and behaviors." ZMET has always been used to generate information to stimulate the response of 95% important parts of the customer's brain, because many choices of customers are made under the impetus of this part of the brain. Its working principle is to obtain deep metaphors that people unconsciously associate with a product or feeling.
Sarkozy said that language is very limited and cannot be confused with thinking itself. However, the image is one step closer to obtaining the complex and contradictory fragments of the unconscious sensory world. He asked his subjects to draw pictures that could represent their thoughts and feelings about something, although they couldn't explain why. Salkman found that when people do this, they often find "a profound metaphor in a unique situation". After studying all over the world, he thinks that the types of these unconscious metaphors are limited, and metaphors expressing feelings such as hope and sadness are universally applicable to everyone.
Salkman found that even metaphors have practical uses. A construction company asked him to help design a new children's hospital, trying to make the hospitalized children, their parents and hospital staff less unbearable. With the help of ZMET technology, children, parents and staff drew their images related to this hospital. Subsequently, the researchers asked them about these pictures for nearly two hours to explore their thoughts, feelings and associations. A series of metaphors appeared in the dialogue. After a series of treatments, although the students' expressions and emotions are very different, the core theme has finally come out. For this children's hospital, the main metaphor is transformation, and the auxiliary metaphor is control, communication and energy.
How are these themes embodied? When the hospital is completed in 2008, when patients and their families walk in, they will be surrounded by butterfly patterns symbolizing transformation. Ward is more like a home room, and children can have some control over their personal space. You can see a big garden from each ward, which symbolizes transformation, communication and energy. A designer said: "In the past, design was a gamble, and success or failure depended on luck. Now we know that the deepest theme of this hospital must be related to change. "
Of course. Salkman is not the only one who studies customers' thoughts. In a blink of an eye, Gradwell described the costly mistakes made by Coca-Cola Company. The Coca-Cola Company changed the beverage formula according to the data in the blindfolded taste test, but the "new Coca-Cola" completely failed in the market. In fact, although the taste is not as popular as Pepsi, Coca-Cola is still the leader in the field of soft drinks. A new study published after Gradwell's book was completed may explain this.
Researchers at Baylor University School of Medicine asked 67 supporters of Coca-Cola and Pepsi to make a choice. When blindfolded, they prefer Pepsi. But when they see the company logo before drinking, 3/4 people prefer delicious food. The researchers scanned the brains of the subjects during the test and found that the Coca-Cola trademark triggered violent activities in parts of the brain related to memory and self-image. Although Pepsi tastes better to most people, it has hardly affected these areas. When this study was published in June last year, 65438+ 10, Reed of the Brown Foundation Human Neuroscanning Laboratory of Baylor University. Montague explained it this way: "The Coca-Cola trademark has strongly influenced the activities related to behavior control in the human brain-the flash of memory and self-image."
The key, he says, is that the brain has made a response that can affect behavior. "Strangely, this reaction has nothing to do with the preference of consciousness. Get to know the unconscious mind. Dogs will come and smell you. If it remembers you, and you are a good person in its impression, then it immediately starts wagging its tail and may even lick your wrist. But it may also avoid you, associate you with food, or bite you quickly. All these impressions and connections are caused by a sniff. People are actually the same as dogs in this respect, except that they don't walk over and smell others. Dr dolores, a psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, said.
Malaspina said, "A smell is not just a symbol, it contains a wide range of contents." He explained that olfactory information is different because it is the only sensory information that does not stay in the brain-thalamus, but directly reaches the forebrain cortex. The sense of smell does not need to be transferred or filtered, it violently impacts the forebrain cortex. Researchers have found that sense of smell plays an important role in choosing a spouse, but we don't realize it. Women in the same room often have the same menstrual cycle, because the smell they unconsciously smell will activate their endocrine system. Marasduna said: "Our brains have been developing since the fetus, but they are destined to give up the control of smell."
But what if the sense of smell doesn't work properly? Malaspina and other researchers are studying the sense of smell of patients with mental illness and have come to some interesting conclusions. Although schizophrenia is regarded as a disorder of hallucination and delusion, the more obvious and destructive symptom of this disease is social disorder. Some schizophrenics can't understand social cues and deal with social relations. Hallucinations and delusions can be controlled by drugs, but basic social barriers make patients encounter more difficulties in coping with daily life.
Studies have shown that many schizophrenics also suffer from "clinical olfactory dysfunction", including the dysfunction of the parietal lobe (responsible for integrating sensory information to understand something, such as understanding social clues or combining these clues). Since a breath can immediately evoke a scene at a specific time and place, the lack of this ability will make a person lose the most basic opportunities and emotional support in life. Malaspina said: "We gradually realize that smell is a good way to study the unconscious basis of social ability and social interest."
A patient with brain injury is lying in bed, not completely unconscious or unconscious, but the spark of consciousness will only be fleeting. Only subtle actions can prove that he or she is still alive or knows that relatives and friends are around. In medicine, these patients are said to be in the lowest state of consciousness. It is estimated that there are 1 10,000 to 300,000 Americans in this state.
The journal Neurology published an amazing research report: the researchers studied the brains of two people with the lowest level of consciousness with magnetic resonance imaging equipment, and then compared them with the brains of seven healthy men and women. Scans show that patients with the lowest consciousness have less brain activity than others. Then, the researchers played tapes recorded by their family or friends to the subjects, telling happy past events or experiences. A subconscious patient listened to his sister's memories of her wedding and his congratulations. The results are very surprising: all the scanned people, including those with the lowest consciousness, show similar brain activities, and some people also show activities in the visual cortex.
Although there is evidence that unconsciousness exists widely in daily life, even the fanatic of unconscious thinking, Salkman, advises not to jump to conclusions, whether it is a damaged brain or a healthy brain. "I don't think we know the ratio of pure rational thinking to seemingly pure intuitive thinking." The balance between the two, known and unknown, conscious and unconscious, and the mixture of 5% and 95%, is exactly what pioneers who study the huge and complex spiritual world should continue to explore. However, we may never find out. In the final analysis, the mystery of consciousness and the mystery of brain are always the ultimate mystery of why people are "people"