Unified experience, many brain sub-systems…

The way that we experience the world, internal and external, provides a somewhat false sense that a singular mind is responsible. Significantly, we remain largely unaware of the operation and impact of any of the many ’sub-systems’ in the brain responsible for our ’singular experiene’ of the world. Some of these systems are inaccessible and buried well below our consciousness (eg, the McGurk video below), yet others remain tantilisingly within reach once we build awareness and target attention.

To help me frame this for you, try watching the following, first with you eyes closed or not watching the screen, and then watching the face:

As it turns out, you will be unable to alter this effect. No matter how hard you try, what you hear with your ears only cannot be translated to using your ears and eyes together. It becomes more pronounced when you open and close your eyes within the one playing of the video.

The real point of this is that when you use your ears only, you engage only one of the brain systems, but when you use both visual an dauditory systems, the brain alters the experience you have. No conscious intervention can change this. Some of these subsystems, however, can be altered with the use of targetted attention (more on attention in a later blog).

Before progressing here, it is worth noting that some of these brain sub-systems seem to work together, some work in opposition. The McGurk effect demonstrates the difference in outcomes when subsystems combine. What I really need to show here is that two significant ’systems’, that impact powerfully on how we interact with ourselves and others, work antagonistically.

Consider the following situations:
You are in a nice restaurant wating for your meal whilst having an engaging conversation with your partner around planning an excting upcoming holiday. You begin to notice that first one table, then more are being served their meals, though you are sure that you ordered before them. Your attention now gradually begins to drift away from your immersed planning to scanning and watching for more evidence. As your observations are confirmed, you unsuccessfully try to catch the eye of the waiter, who is clearly serving others who ordered well after you. Very soon, your ability to engage at a thinking level is reduced dramatically in proportion to the increase in the ‘gut response’. As this situation progresses, the whole experience is hijacked by an emotive response, characterised by feelings of anger, increased heart rate, raised voice, and strong eye cotact/body language. You even notice that you are now not as hungry…

Using my Blue Zone/Red Zone concept, this has been a shift from the blue to the red.

Here’s another emtional hijack:

And here’s a great example of the shift into a strong red zone repsonse from two people (though I am not sure how much in the blue to begin with either person was…):

These situations are realy the result of a shift in brain resources from the pre frontal cortex (‘Blue Zone” – planning, reflecting, managing, thinking) to the limbic system (Red Zone), and as this shift progresses, less thinking and more feeling occurs. You literally get to the point where thinking and executive control (like this is not such a good idea – surely a thought that might have had a better outcome in the video above) becomes impossible. At a functional level, the brain is reducing the level of available resources to the pre frontal cortex as the demands of the older and more innate limbic syste grow.

The first step to gaining control and clarity over this shift is awareness, particularly of the brain state you are in. The next blog will cover this with a concept called ‘Limbic Literacy’…