I’m sure most of us all received the survey maybe 6 months ago asking “Do you control your own thoughts?”
Obviously I chose “No” I do not control my own thoughts.
Since then the question has been on my mind. “Where do our thoughts actually come from?”
For instance, when we all of sudden get a great new idea from out of nowhere.
Another instance, when you have a conversation with yourself inside your head, who is the voice that answers your questions?
In: 5
All thoughts are patterns of neurons firing, but unfortunately, our neuroscience is not yet at the point where we can point at group of neurons and say “look! A getting-a-taco thought just formed! There it goes to join the plans-for-the-day train!”
Though maybe one day that will be possible. There have been multiple experiments with using machine learning to decode brain signals and figure out what words, sounds, motions and images the person (or an animal) is thinking of, and with direct brain interface like Neuralink coming up we should get even more data to figure out what’s up with the brain, but it will be a while before we can get to “individual thought” level.
Developing a theory of “how neurons firing leads to thoughts” needs measurements. Accurate measurements are difficult to take because 1. there is a lot of brain and skull between you and those signals, and 2. reaching for them anyway tends to kill the subject or leave them a vegetable, so doing those kinds of experiments is all around problematic.
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