What is the specific process for thoughts? How do they move in the brain and what is moving them from one area to another?
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We have incomplete answers to this question. But an answer is that thoughts look like they are what happens when specific parts of the brain do its thing. The problem in our knowledge is that we don’t really understand how the physical process at the neuron-level becomes a conscious experience. a single neuron isn’t a thought, probably. Neurons fire in networks throughout the brain. And somehow, it’s this simultaneous/sequential firing that seems to produce thoughts.
What’s happening at the neural level is that a single neuron is ‘firing,’ which means an electrical signal is cascading from the body of the neuron down its axon toward another neuron. At the end of the axon, it releases chemicals called neurotransmitters that cross an empty space and attach themselves to the dendrites of the other neuron. This process of connecting neurotransmitters can either cause the other neuron to fire more rapidly or more slowly, depending on the specific chemical and receptor.
Like I said, there isn’t any point at which this simple process = a thought. It’s only when you have the complex patterns of neural activity that we seem to have thoughts.
There aren’t any good analogies for it and its not fully understood.
Neurons have inputs from other neurons and outputs to other neurons. Each neuron essentially gets to decide to continue a signal or not. This on its own doesn’t mean much but in a large network of billions of neurons this allows for the emergence of thought.
It’s also not static, neurons can change which other neurons they are connected to, connections that are seldom used can be lost, etc. so while u are bouncing signals around a complicated network, that network is also constantly re-arranging itself.
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