Our minds work in ways not dissimilar to bees working together to make a decision. It might not be obvious to us, that is, unless we have damage to our frontal lobe, but we gather together several possibilities before settling on one as the action we’re going to take. Here’s how:
Every decision you make is essentially a committee act. Members chime in, options are weighed, and eventually a single proposal for action is approved by consensus. The committee, of course, is the densely knit society of neurons in your head. And “approved by consensus” is really just a delicate way of saying that the opposition was silenced.
Our brains seem to work not by generating only “correct” actions and executing them in serial, but rather by representing…
Original article written by Jason Castro and posted in Scientific American March 1, 2012.
Leave a Reply