Why are people conscious and animals unconscious?

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 understanding 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

Outside the world of conscious thinking, every time I close the office door, there will always be a melody in my head. You always prefer Coca-Cola to Pepsi. A certain expression on your spouse's face will inexplicably arouse your desire for love or anger. Besides, the reason why you married your spouse at the beginning now seems so unreasonable.

All these prove that your unconscious is playing a positive role. Although these cases seem unrelated, they all reveal an 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 done,

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 4.

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 in the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Science at Emory University, said, "Your actions, thoughts, consciousness and unconsciousness.

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, and this understanding may shake our belief 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 for a reason. ...

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 brain activities outside 95% of consciousness. From heartbeat, pushing a shopping cart to deciding not to hurt a litter of kittens, we rely on something called "adaptive unconsciousness". This is how the brain understands the world with which our minds and bodies must communicate. Adapting to the unconscious allows us to drive on a street corner and find out the accurate turning angle, speed and driving radius without complicated calculation. 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 in the field of neuroscience what motivates people to buy one thing instead of another, which goes straight to the core of motivation.

Salcman tries to find a way to go beyond the unreliable sample group survey, avoid the interference of irrelevant factors and learn to grasp the real needs of customers, which will make the sales and promotion work more effective.

His method was patented in the United States, and it is called "Salkman Metaphor Induction" (ZMET). The patent certificate describes this method as a technique of "obtaining relevant 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 get people who are unconsciously associated 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, even if 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 believes.

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 hospital-related images. Later, the researchers asked them about these pictures for nearly two hours. 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 different, the core theme finally surfaced. For this children's hospital, the main metaphor is change, 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 come in, they will be surrounded by butterfly patterns symbolizing transformation. Ward is more like a family room, and children can control their private space to some extent. From all the wards, you can see a big garden, 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 this.

Of course, Salkman is not the only one who studies customers' ideas. In the book Blink of an Eye, Gradwell described the costly mistakes made by Coca-Cola Company. Coca-Cola Company changed the beverage formula according to the data in the blindfolded taste test, but "New Coca-Cola" was a fiasco 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 may be published after Gradwell's book is completed.

Researchers at Baylor University School of Medicine asked 67 supporters of Coca-Cola and Pepsi to make a choice. When they are blindfolded, they prefer Pepsi. But when they see the company logo before drinking, 3/4 people prefer Coca-Cola. The researchers scanned the subjects' brains during the test and found that the logo of Coca-Cola triggered intense activity in parts of the brain related to memory and self-image. Although Pepsi tastes better to most people, it has little effect on these areas. When this research was released in June of last year, 5438+ 10, Reed montague of the Brown Foundation Human Nerve Scanning Laboratory of Baylor University explained this way: "The Coca-Cola trademark strongly influenced the activities related to behavior control in the human brain-memory and self-image flash."

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 at the level of consciousness. Dogs that have a preliminary understanding of unconscious thinking will come forward to sniff 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 be far away from you, linking you with food. Or a quick bite. All these impressions and connections are caused by a sniff. People are actually like dogs in this respect, but they don't go 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 includes 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 thalamus, the relay station of the brain, but directly reaches the forebrain. The sense of smell violently impacts the forebrain without being transferred or filtered. Researchers have found that smell plays an important role in choosing a spouse without our realizing it. Women in the same room often have the same menstrual cycle, because the smell they unconsciously smell will activate their endocrine system. Maradona said: "Our brain has been developing since the fetus, but it is destined to control the 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 parietal lobe dysfunction (the parietal lobe is responsible for integrating sensory information to understand something, such as understanding social cues or integrating these cues). 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 realized that the sense of smell is used to study social skills and social support.

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 used magnetic resonance imaging 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. Scans show that patients with the lowest level of consciousness have less brain activity than others. Then the researchers played tapes recorded by their family or friends to the subjects respectively. Tell a happy past or the same experience. A subconscious patient listened to her sister's memories of her wedding and his congratulations. The results are very surprising: all the people scanned, 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, whether for damaged brains or healthy brains, even the fanatic of unconscious thinking, Salkman, advises against jumping to conclusions. "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.