The BBC Future columnist has come to the surprising conclusion that conscious thinking is the smallest in our brains. Is it so? Judge for yourself.
Ever thought that the process of quickly pyramiding plastic cups could overwhelm you? Then watch this video.
In it, neuroscientist David Eagleman introduces 10-year-old Austin Naber, the world record holder for cup stacking (which, in fact, means the very construction of pyramids from cups - Ed.).
Naber handles cups with incredible speed, and when Eagleman tries to keep up with him, the child's advantage in agility and speed becomes especially evident.
“He made me,” Eagleman admits. “But more importantly, it was my first cup stacking experience in my life. I carried out all the operations consciously and, in an attempt to understand exactly how to put the cups so that everything would not fall apart, I wasted a lot of mental energy."
During the experiment, the brain activity of Eagleman and Naber was recorded using an electroencephalograph. The difference was striking.
Eagleman's brain was working at full capacity, while Naber's brain was barely showing signs of activity - despite the speed with which the child placed the cups.
“The boy's brain remained much quieter than mine because the actions he performed were sharpened to automatism,” explains Eagleman.
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Many hours of daily training helped Naber internalize the process of placing cups, so that now he does not need to think about the operations being performed.
And what other processes can our brain internalize?
This is the question Eagleman asks in a television series recently shown on BBC4. The subconscious mind plays a much more important role in our day-to-day decisions and interpersonal relationships than one might think, he said.
To begin with, we do not consciously control our breathing and the functions of internal organs. But there are many other examples.
Take hitting a ball with a baseball bat, for example. A ball launched at about 160 km / h takes only a few hundred milliseconds to reach the batter.
It flies so fast that it is simply impossible to consciously assess its trajectory and hit with the bat in time. Only after the blow does the batter realize what happened.
“The reason consistent training is so important in any sport is because the athlete needs to hone their actions to the point of automaticity,” says Eagleman. "If you think about what you are doing and how every time, the speed will inevitably be low."
The subconscious mind also works in more complex situations - when assessing the sexual attractiveness of members of the opposite sex, solving simple math problems and forming political views, for example.
There are also quite unusual cases where people believed to be blind can "see" through their subconscious mind - a phenomenon known as blind sight.
“There is even a debate in the scientific community as to whether human consciousness is effective at all,” says Eagleman. "Our consciousness registers events with such a long delay that its opinion about what is happening does not really matter."
Designers and advertisers have used this for centuries to drive our solutions.
By manipulating the subconscious, they can force us to comply with road safety rules, behave in a certain way in certain areas of the city, and even consume more alcohol in bars.
But now, when neuroscientists are seriously engaged in the study of the subconscious, the likelihood is growing that they will be able to offer methods to improve the quality of life of the population.
One of the topics that Eagleman deals with has to do with the influence of the subconscious on the formation of a person's addiction to drugs, including cocaine.
While this research is at an early stage, the scientist hopes that achieving greater awareness of the addiction will allow drug addicts to gain more control over it.
The more we study how the brain works, the more we understand that consciousness is just a summary of the processes that take place in our head without our conscious participation.
According to Eagleman, “consciousness - that which turns on when we wake up in the morning - is the smallest fraction of what is going on in our head. It is like a cramped closet in a vast brain estate."