Examples:
If I receive the results from a blood test and it shows my testosterone levels are well below average – not affected by any external factors. Why can’t my brain then send signals to create more testosterone?
If I’m feeling tired and can’t sleep, why can’t I sleep even though I need it?
Why is the brain just reactive and pro-active? Why are we not able to control things like the examples above? Is there a limit to how much our consciousness plays a part in our internal bodily functions? If so why? The part of the brain who handles consciousness is still part of the brain so why can’t it communicate these things?
In: 4
You send signals to get more testosterone by going and eating the correct diet. You do the action and you get the reward you seek.
You can’t sleep even though you need it based upon your disconnection with the outside stimulus and letting that crap go to fall blissfully asleep. Ignorance is bliss and falling asleep is ignorance to all the work that needs to be done. Either get up and complete the work and than reward with sleep or don’t and just sit their in the bed under the covers being warms and cozy but filled with stress.
>Why is the brain just reactive
I’ve been practicing responding over reacting. It’s doable.
>there a limit to how much our consciousness plays a part in our internal bodily functions?
How far can you test your body, people like wim hoff and David goggins break the barriers of what the human body and mind can accomplish. Those are real life Hercules.
Just because you can’t do it, or think how to do it. does not mean at all it’s not possible. Everything is possible but how much of your life are you willing to sacrifice to prove it?
> Why can’t my brain then send signals to create more testosterone?
Your brain is evolved through natural selection to work your body in a way in which it can survive. It has no innate understanding of the complex biochemistry that makes it function and there is no way being able to consciously control testosterone production would be beneficial to a simple animal. Once humans developed science to the point of discovering that testosterone exists the brain still lacked any conscious method of controlling it.
Think about the havoc something like a squirrel could cause in its own complex biochemistry if it could voluntarily control every aspect. How would a squirrel understand what cranking up serotonin would do? Is there a survival benefit for being able to stop its own heart at will? No! There is no reason for those abilities to naturally evolve so they didn’t.
This is a *super* complex question and there are many overlapping and incomplete answers.
[Disclaimer – I am an AI researcher with a limited background in neuroscience and bioinformatics; I am not fully qualified to answer this question and if someone more qualified comes along, listen to them instead of me]
The short answer is that your consciousness, your cognition, your awareness – probably everything you consider “you” – seems to *mostly* happen in the outermost layers of your brain. The majority of your brain is not something that “thinks” in the way that you consciously experience.
Your conscious brain says “walk” but it doesn’t (usually) coordinate the actual locomotion. That’s something else called the “ventral spinocerebellar tract neurons”.
In the extreme cases, when the doctor hits your knee with that little hammer and your leg kicks out, your brain has nothing to do with it at all. Your knee gets hit, the signal goes up to your spine and your spine fires back a signal which causes your muscle to contract.
Your conscious parts are part of you but you are not a little remote control piloting a meat robot. Control of your body is a distributed process, and most of what happens is not something that your prefrontal cortex decides. Your whole nervous system – the conscious bits, the subconscious bits, the bits that aren’t even in your brain – all of these **cooperate** to keep you alive and working. Your conscious self might feel like it has full executive control (and it is remarkably powerful) but it isn’t sitting in a little control room with access to all the levers.
if u could control the release of your own hormones, you’d just be high off of your own serotonin all day
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