Thinking Out LoudSitting down to watch my neuroscience uni lectures (at home, on 2x speed, of course), I am regularly struck by two truths: firstly, the intricate complexity of our brains, and secondly, how much we do not know about the intricate complexity of our brains. Which is kind of ironic – my brain attempts to learn about itself, but it doesn’t know the very mechanism by which it learns (and by “it”, I mean me).
It’s reasonable that there is so much unknown in outer space or the bottom of the ocean. Both are all very far away, out of sight, out of mind. But it is harder to consider that there is so much unknown within my own head. The fundamental building blocks of our conscious experience are not well understood.
When someone asks me what I did on the weekend, I don’t think about how the rapid firing of many neurons per second has formed my conscious perception, and how that has then been stored in my memory. When someone asks me to tell them about myself, I don’t describe myself as an organism chasing that dopamine hit. Neuroscience can’t cohesively answer even these basic questions. Neuroscience can’t tell me who I am.
Knowledge and control are important to me, things without which I would probably lose my mind, so to speak. I like to think I know myself, and that my life will play out exactly as I direct. But even my own mental processes are unconscious, or in other words, unknown and out of my control. To be truly known, I must look beyond science to the one who knows all and is in control of all.