why does our “subconscious” know more than “conscious” memory?

Question

There are tons of examples of this but the example I like to use is that I listen to a bunch of cds in my car. If you asked me what order the songs were on the cd I wouldn’t know, but if I think of a specific song and press the skip button my brain knows exactly how many times to hit the skip button to get to whatever song without fail. Even though I don’t consciously know the order of the songs my brain does.

There are plenty of other examples of this as well that are just little things you seem to *know* without *knowing*. Is there a scientific explanation for this?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Your brain stores massive amounts of data. In fact, your brain is the most powerful supercomputer in existence. It is capable of doing thirty-eight thousand trillions of processes per second. That makes your iPhone look like an amoeba.

However, all of that information that you’re taking in and processing every second would instantly overwhelm your conscious awareness. Thus you have evolved to do these computations outside of conscious awareness.

A part of your mind (brain location unknown) dubbed the “reticular activation system” determines what information should be acted upon by the conscious awareness. The rest is automated.

In fact, you are so efficient that some of your skills and habits take place by “muscle memory”. You get so good at it that you barely need any help even from the processes of the brain.

The conscious part of you, unfortunately, can only handle so much of the input at a time, so it’s basically censored for you.

The subconscious mind actually guides most of your actions. This is why you can head for the mall and suddenly realized you took the turn off towards work instead. You’ve literally automated the process of driving so well that you do it with little conscious thought.

Everything is stored in your brain… It’s accessing that stored information which can be very tricky, as you noticed in your example. They information about the CD order was not offered up to your conscious mind until you told your mind it was relevant.