subliminal - how your unconscious mind rules your behavior - leonard mlodinow

[...]... what you are doing with your conscious mind, it is your unconscious that dominates your mental activity—and therefore uses up most of the energy consumed by the brain Regardless of whether your conscious mind is idle or engaged, your unconscious mind is hard at work doing the mental equivalent of push-ups, squats, and wind sprints ONE OF THE most important functions of your unconscious is the processing... from traumatic early experiences like hers and understand how such experiences cause physical changes in stress-sensitive brain regions.4 The modern concept of the unconscious, based on such studies and measurements, is often called the “new unconscious, ” to distinguish it from the idea of the unconscious that was popularized by a neurologist-turned-clinician named Sigmund Freud Early on, Freud made several... static one.22 In other words, if your right eye were exposed to a film of two monkeys playing Ping-Pong and your left to a photo of a hundred-dollar bill, you’d be unaware of the static photo even though your left eye had recorded the data and transmitted it to your brain The technique provides a powerful tool for creating, in a sense, artificial blindsight—a new way to study unconscious vision without destroying... the power of the unconscious The truth is that our unconscious minds are active, purposeful, and independent Hidden they may be, but their effects are anything but, for they play a critical role in shaping the way our conscious minds experience and respond to the world To begin our tour of the hidden areas of the mind, let’s consider the way we receive sensory input, the conscious and unconscious pathways... rather, are somehow created—and constrained—by the general features of the mind That belief was surprisingly near the modern perspective, though today scholars generally take a more expansive view than Kant’s of the mind s general features, especially with regard to biases arising from our desires, needs, beliefs, and past experiences Today we believe that when you look at your mother-in-law, the image... Imagine yourself sprawled on the couch watching television; you are subject to few demands on your body Then imagine yourself doing something physically demanding—say, racing down a street When you run fast, the energy consumption in your muscles is multiplied by a factor of one hundred compared to the energy you use as a couch potato That’s because, despite what you might tell your significant other, your. .. vegging out, in which your conscious mind is basically idle, and playing chess Assuming that you are a good player with an excellent knowledge of all the possible moves and strategies and are concentrating deeply, does all that conscious thought tax your conscious mind to the same degree that running taxed your muscles? No Not remotely Deep concentration causes the energy consumption in your brain to go... Virtually overnight, my mother’s life had been transformed from that of a well-loved and well-caredfor teenager in a well-to-do family to that of an orphaned, hated, and starving slave laborer After her liberation my mother emigrated, married, settled in a peaceful neighborhood in Chicago, and had a stable and safe lower-middle-class family existence She no longer had any rational reason to fear the sudden... them, however, because the interplay between our conscious and our unconscious minds is so complex This complexity has its roots in the physiology of our brains As mammals, we have new layers of cortex built upon the base of our more primitive reptilian brains; and as humans, we have yet more cerebral matter built upon those We have an unconscious mind and, superimposed upon it, a conscious brain How. .. rational How does our unconscious affect our attitude about questions like Which house should I buy? Which stock should I sell? Should I hire that person to take care of my child? Or: Are bright blue eyes into which I can’t stop staring a sufficient basis for a long-term loving relationship? If it is difficult to recognize automatic behavior in animals, it is even more difficult to recognize habitual behavior . Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mlodinow, Leonard, [date] Subliminal : how your unconscious mind rules your behavior / Leonard Mlodinow. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. eISBN: 97 8-0 -3 0 7-9 074 4-8 1 the unconscious mind and how they influence us. To gain a true understanding of human experience, we must understand both our conscious and our unconscious selves, and how they interact. Our subliminal. when you don’t call your mother 2 Senses Plus Mind Equals Reality The two-tier system of the brain … how you can see something without knowing it 3 Remembering and Forgetting How the brain builds