For example we might be sitting reading something and then suddenly realize we were playing with a pen without having any active thought to play with that pen.
Or perhaps you might be doing something weird with your tongue whilst focusing hard on a task, or playing with your beard whilst watching a video, etc etc.
How do we do these things without putting any active thought into doing it and why?
In: Biology
A neuroscience answer: your cerebral cortex and thalamus simply work together to filter these things out. Your thalamus is a relay center for inputs, i.e. it decides what is important enough to be sent to the cerebral cortex for higher processing. When you initiate an action, obviously these inputs are important, but your neurons adapt, and eventually your thalamus “decides” to simply not let the cerebral cortex know, and other connections in the brain do the processing without conscious awareness.
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