You probably have noticed that our thoughts are often influenced by our past experiences and memories. One Guru of recent times even goes to the extent of dismissing thoughts as just a jumbling of memories and nothing else!
That is not so. If thoughts were just jumbling of memories, then there would not have been anything like discovery or for that matter creativity. We do think of things that we have never experienced before. An artist or a writer creates an altogether new world which was unseen before.
Yes, thoughts are influenced by our memories or the state of our mind. But they are not just a soup of memories.
We all know that we think sometimes. But can it be objectively proven that we think? Since our hypothesis has been throughout, that mind and brain are synonymous, can we correlate our thoughts to the happenings within our brain?
But what the scientists observed was that, the brain was still active as if it was busy doing something. Different regions of the brain were active simultaneously with new pathways dynamically setup between these regions. But strangely, all the activity subsids when the individual starts performing some physical task or sense perception, only to resume when the person is not performing any task!
Scientists suspect that these activities are because of thoughts that go on within the brain of the individual when he is not involved in any other external activity. Obviously, that is what you do when you are idle – idle mind is devils’ workshop! The mental devil starts the moment it gets an opportunity!
But when there is no external input, no physical action, what drives these activities in various regions of the mind? After all, the neurons in those regions would not start working on their own. They need some trigger.
Just one trigger is not sufficient. This activity has to be kept sustained by triggering them again and again.
Scientists know that even an idle neuron comes into action when it is in the ‘vicinity’ of another active neuron which happens to be connected to it, albeit by a ‘weak’ connection. Even though these two neurons don’t form part of any function, just by virtue of their being connected induces activity in the otherwise idle neuron as a result of what is called as ‘back firing’.
Normally, an active neuron triggers another neuron that succeeds it. But what can also happen is that an active neuron can coax an idle neuron that precedes it. After sometime, even this idle neuron becomes active.
But this new activity has to be kept sustained. Otherwise, it will gradually dampen out. Once the activity is sustained, it in turn activates several other neurons connected to it and the process goes on.
If left in a favorable condition, after sometime clusters of active neurons which were hitherto inactive can get formed. The requirement is
- Presence of active neurons in the vicinity.
- Something that keeps the new activity sustained.
But what actually gets formed can be quite different from what caused it since the newly formed cluster of active neurons is a result of complex interaction between several other clusters of previously active neurons.
So, yes, thoughts are influenced by our memories, but they are not just replicas of them. That does not make any sense, nor it is ever experienced that way. Memories are just a starting point. And what finally comes out is a result of complex interaction between several memories and experiences.
Otherwise there would not have been a Shakespeare or an Einstein. All of us would have thought the same way. That would have made a bland world!
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King 2019
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