More and more, I have been finding myself mentioning ideas from the book "Incognito" by David Eagleman. I feel that if a book comes to mind during a normal day, when I am not actively reading it at the time, it must have mattered to my little gray cells. At the same time, I have been reading "Into the Gray Zone" by Adrian Owen, a British/Canadian neuroscientist. Owen specializes in understanding and trying to help people that are in the "gray zone", such as a coma or similar vegetative state. Some of the ideas and phrases send me to "Idiotic Brain" by Dean Burnett, a Welsch neuroscientist who also writes a blog that is published in The Guardian, a British newspaper.
I read years ago of Edith Bone, a woman imprisoned by Hungarian authorities for seven years in solitary confinement. Her book "Seven Years Solitary" describes efforts to stay sharp and interested and to challenge herself. As neuroscience proceeds, we may get to the point of understanding what certain head injuries and diseases do and finding ways around at least some of them. Whether a person is in solitary confinement or trapped in a cognizant but immobilized body, or suffering from bouts of mind afflictions, they are still alive in some sense.
Eagleman makes clear that the usual body performs many functions, in sleep or in wakefulness, that the conscious mind has little or no access to. My blood pressure, my digestion, the release and re-absorption of hormones and neurotransmitters happen all the time, without my awareness or understanding of them. My brain accomplishes all sorts of regulation and oversight without my conscious mind knowing what is going on.
We are all aware of our minds, memory both short and long term, imagination, emotions and reasoning ability. We tend to think that our minds are in control but Eagleman emphasizes that most of what happens is not part of our thinking. He likens the situation to a CEO (the conscious mind) that gets notified of a problem or a contradiction ("I want ice cream but I shouldn't eat any") when the usual procedures are held up or obstructed. If our sub-parts start arguing with each other, call in the CEO. Eagleman says that when I have a great idea, my sub-parts have been working on the problem in complex ways for quite a while. Finally, the issue has been passed on to my conscious mind.
