Who Is In Control? Part 3
Description
This episode of The Brain with David Eagleman series explores the great deception that greets us each morning when we awake: it feels as though we are in conscious control of our lives but the truth is that we are not. Instead almost every action, every decision, every belief that we hold is driven by parts of the brain that we have no access to. To demonstrate why so many of our actions are governed by the unconscious, Dr. Eagleman competes with a 10 year old world champion in the sport of cup stacking. Wearing EEG caps to record their brain activity as they stack cups reveals that although the young world champion is performing at much greater speed and precision, his brain is almost at rest. Dr. Eagleman’s brain, on the other hand, is working overtime. Deploying consciousness is expensive, compared to running unconscious neural circuits that have been burnt in over many hours of practice. When a skill sinks below the level of conscious control this allows for much greater speed and efficiency. This kind of "automatization" of skills allows the brain to run multiple programs, to multi-task, and it allows the conscious mind to run free. The reach of the unconscious in our lives extends beyond what we physically do to how we behave. Dr. Eagleman reveals that everything from whom we find attractive to how we’ll describe the relationship we have with our mother can be influenced by factors that we have no conscious control over.
Runtime
59 min 12 sec
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