Your world is in your Brain

It Creates The Mental State In Which Each Of Us Exists: We all live in the world of our own,now even scientists say so. Researchers from UK have summed up in their latest study that the brain does not pass on all the information that it soaks up from the surroundings and instead uses this raw data to create a mental world in which each of us exists.

Professor Chris Frith, a neuro-psychologist from University College London, says that our brain can work without our interference is an evolutionary hangover that has helped humans survive.Frith puts forward a mind-boggling prospect: the majority of the work that your brain does goes on unconsciously In fact, your whole world, your consciousness, your reality, is an illusion, created by our brains, every one of which constructs them slightly differently, says UK's Sunday Times.

Our brains are constantly soaking up and processing information from the world around us, monitoring, checking and assessing. But most of the information from our 100 trillion or so brain cells never reaches us. Instead the brain takes this raw data to create a model of the world and this is the mental world in which each of us lives, say Frith and other leading brain experts, while examining the topic of consciousness and the mental world in which we live, at this year's British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival in York. Using noninvasive brain-scanning equipment that provides a window on the brain, clearly showing which brain areas are being used, scientists are gleaning insights into the parts of our brains that produce our conscious selves.The researchers are using this knowledge to gain insights into what happens when we lose consciousness — if we're in a coma, for instance, or under anaesthetic — and to help people with mental disorders and distortions of consciousness, such as schizophrenics.

So, if only a small amount of our brain activity is used to generate our personality, and our worlds, what is the rest doing, and why don't we use it?

The answer, according to Frith, is that if we did use all this information, it would simply put our consciousness into meltdown; we wouldn't be able to handle it.

"We can unconsciously bring together information from many different sources, without thinking about it at all," Frith was quoted as saying. Frith says that if we start to think about how we do things — for example if you start thinking about how you physically move your limbs, or how you actually understand the meaning of these letters on the page — you start to get a bit confused and your brain doesn't work as well.

The brain's ability to act on its own, without any conscious interference by you, may be an evolutionary hangover that helped us to survive, says Frith.

For example, if you see a snake in your path you immediately jump out of the way before you've had time to consciously think to your self, "Eek! Snake in my path".

If you did think about it, in the time spent assessing your actions, you probably would have been bitten. So how have scientists worked out that most of our brain activity is unconscious, and what is actually going on inside our heads?

To answer the first question, Frith says the fact that we can do many skills at once for example, driving a car, while thinking about something completely different, such as what to buy for dinner — has suggested that there are many conscious levels in our brain. And recent experiments using the brain scanning technique fMRI, which pinpoints active brain areas, has confirmed this.

"Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing." Heather Armstrong