Conscious/Unconscious Brain Activity

[OinkBoink]

Okay, so you're breathing.

Now that I've told you that you're breathing, you've begun to do it consciously, whereas prior to reading this it was just happening in a fluid, unconscious manner.

How would you go about making your breathing an unconscious activity again? Would you just let your mind be and let your breathing drift into unconscious terrain? Could you do it consciously?

When you're speaking a language, it just seems to flow out. You don't know exactly what you're going to say. You just have a vague idea about what you want to express and then you just do it. You don't think about all the words and the grammatical nuances.

Similarly, with playing guitar. If you're a fairly advanced player, you play by ear. You just let the music flow out of your brain onto your guitar. You don't think about the notes and all the music theory behind what you're playing.

In fact, when you try to do these activities with full awareness of what you're doing (and especially if you're scared that you're going to make mistakes), they tend to suffer.

Can anyone relate, elaborate and add to this ?

 

[superccs]

Your conscious is like a mentor which guides the body to do certain specific things. Your subconscious is like a computer, which is organized to respond to stimuli (retract from pain or heat, reacquire balance if upset) and do certain tasks walk, control bowels, ride motorcycle...
Neural networks get refined after repeated use... so our bodies by now are pretty good at breathing and not falling down.

 

[Jeff7]

Okay, so you're breathing.

Now that I've told you that you're breathing, you've begun to do it consciously, whereas prior to reading this it was just happening in a fluid, unconscious manner.

How would you go about making your breathing an unconscious activity again? Would you just let your mind be and let your breathing drift into unconscious terrain? Could you do it consciously?

Tie a few cinder blocks to your feet and hands, and jump into a river.
Some aspect of things related to breathing will quickly turn involuntary.

When you're speaking a language, it just seems to flow out. You don't know exactly what you're going to say. You just have a vague idea about what you want to express and then you just do it. You don't think about all the words and the grammatical nuances.

Similarly, with playing guitar. If you're a fairly advanced player, you play by ear. You just let the music flow out of your brain onto your guitar. You don't think about the notes and all the music theory behind what you're playing.

Do something enough, and your brain gets good at it, to the point that the processing doesn't need to be done in the same region that figures out how to perform a new activity.
Instead of popping in a new chip or card, your neurons develop something that can perform hardware acceleration of specific functions.

In fact, when you try to do these activities with full awareness of what you're doing (and especially if you're scared that you're going to make mistakes), they tend to suffer.

Can anyone relate, elaborate and add to this ?

Once the hardware acceleration is developed, trying to do it while actively thinking about it is like dropping back down to software mode, so it's going to run poorly.

 

[Malak]

Okay, so you're breathing.

Now that I've told you that you're breathing, you've begun to do it consciously, whereas prior to reading this it was just happening in a fluid, unconscious manner.

How would you go about making your breathing an unconscious activity again? Would you just let your mind be and let your breathing drift into unconscious terrain? Could you do it consciously?

When you're speaking a language, it just seems to flow out. You don't know exactly what you're going to say. You just have a vague idea about what you want to express and then you just do it. You don't think about all the words and the grammatical nuances.

Similarly, with playing guitar. If you're a fairly advanced player, you play by ear. You just let the music flow out of your brain onto your guitar. You don't think about the notes and all the music theory behind what you're playing.

In fact, when you try to do these activities with full awareness of what you're doing (and especially if you're scared that you're going to make mistakes), they tend to suffer.

Can anyone relate, elaborate and add to this ?

You probably pulled this from a website or some ridiculous textbook, but it is very shallow thought. There are multiple concepts here but the bottom line is that all your assumptions are wrong.

 

[Nik]

You probably pulled this from a website or some ridiculous textbook, but it is very shallow thought. There are multiple concepts here but the bottom line is that all your assumptions are wrong.

and, as usual, you'll tell someone they're wrong but when they challenge you on the subject, you'll clam up and won't tell us all how we're wrong.

Typical Malak-tactics.

 

[zanejohnson]

it flows like that for a good musician because they are creating art when they are "in the zone" there is so much going on there, i couldnt sit here and put the the math down for you on but, creativity, is well, you get into some synesthesia, timing, thinking about how it will sound to an audience, all while thinking of the entire production as a whole..

then you wanna sit here and be like ok, you start thinking about breathing... you change your "focus" to breathing, thats it...as soon as you focus on something else, it goes back into it's normal system which is run by brain stem stuff.... we're like a big computer, that stuff is like the stuff run by bios i guess...it CAN be rebooted too..

 

[vi edit]

Breathing is nothing like the other activities you mentioned. There's a part of your brain there working all the time that will ultimately shut down your little games and make you passout/blackout and then it'll take back over again. There's no subconscious involved there. Just pure survival instinct. Your body will let you have just enough fun and then it'll take over.

The other stuff are just perks of being gifted with higher functions of learning and development.

 

[busydude]

You probably pulled this from a website or some ridiculous textbook, but it is very shallow thought. There are multiple concepts here but the bottom line is that all your assumptions are wrong.

:hmm:

Yes.. your insight is unparalleled.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

Just hold your breath until you die. Go ahead, you can do it!

 

[Matthiasa]

That hurts so bad... muscles start to tense up and the pain becomes unbearable... then your body forces you to breath again.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

i forget all the physio but respiratory control is in the mid-brain. its the most primitive and least developed part of the brain and is what all the lower forms of life also have. it's part of the autonomic nervous system and you can have limited control over it, but the respiratory center resumes control over it for it most part.

it is also why one of the tests for brain death is the apnea challenge test. when you're on a ventilator, they stop it to let you CO2 rise. normally, the respirator center should take over to try and resume homeostasis but during brain death, it's absent. it is the 'lowest' developed part of the brain and the least under our control and the most resilient to damage.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I've seen that "You are now manually breathing," image macro so many times that it doesn't affect me anymore. All that happens is that I become aware of my autonomic breathing -- I don't force any control over it.