Your brain is (primarily) not for thinking
Or, travel is like flexing your brain's muscles
According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University, the main job of our brains is to regulate, or run a budget, for your body.
Here's two examples of how your brain controls your awareness:
When you drink water it takes 20 minutes for it to reach your bloodstream. So when you're thirsty and you feel quenched a minute after swallowing a drink, it's not a biological reality but a kind of a neurological trick.
And:
Your body has no wetness sensors on your skin. It has temperature sensors and touch sensors. When you feel sweat build up in your arms pits, for example, your brain is taking two different sources of information and combining them.
“Neuroscientists like to say that your day-to-day experience is a carefully controlled hallucination, constrained by the world and your body but ultimately constructed by your brain,” writes Dr. Barrett.
All of us would like to think that, when it comes to our brain, we are taking in data from the world around us and willfully reacting to it. That our minds are the brain's steering wheel, and like a documentary film director, we’re objectively recording the world and making the final editorial cuts.
But at every moment we rely on a backlog of memories and experiences, unconsciously cross-referencing and constructing how to deal with any new incoming data (from your eyes, heart, lungs, metabolism, immune system etc) in order to make predictions.
"You’re almost always acting on the predictions that your brain is making about what’s going to happen next, not reacting to experience as it unfolds," according to Dr. Barrett.
Let's say this out loud: our brain is not reacting to experience as it unfolds.
In essence we are prediction machines.
And yet, our perceptions are real. If I take a daily walk and see the same rice farmers tending their fields, I am seeing that reality. At the same time my brain is working on a variety of processes, such as telling my leg muscles what to do, tracking my metabolism, my bodily fluids, salt levels, etc in order to make it appear that I'm seamlessly taking in the view of the rice farmers as a kind of disembodied mind. Like I'm composing a movie of Bali rice farmers doing their job.
But what is really happening is that my brain has predicted that while I'm walking "I'm ok." There are no major threats such as lightning storms or rabid dogs or an out of control scooter about to crash into me. In this kind of "safe mode" I can pretend that I'm in charge of what I'm experiencing, when in reality, my prediction machine has allowed me to chill-out and take in the scenery.
My decision to walk each morning seems like it's mine too, but the reality is if my walking routine was in any way unsafe my brain wouldn't allow me to continue.
My brain has decided that before it instructs my muscles to begin moving my legs, it's made a budgetary decision that the benefits of taking a walk are going to outweigh the costs.
Take Baseball:
In the less than half a second for the ball to go from the pitcher's hand to the batter, predictions are made as to where the ball may exactly travel. The batter cannot watch the ball on its flight towards the catcher, as the ball is moving too fast. Instead the batter makes a series of predictions based on factors such as previous at-bats with this particular pitcher, his previous exercise routines and discussions with his coach, how many of his fellow players are on base, what the score is, etc.
The act of the batter's swing is primarily automatic, based on what athletes call muscle memory. The batter can only prepare so much for his moment at the plate. The reality is he's on autopilot during the actual swing.
We are all on autopilot.
"Predicting and correcting is a much more efficient way to run a system than reacting all the time," according to Dr. Barrett. It's metabolically the efficient way to go.
And once again, the brain relies primarily on past experiences to make the best predictions about our future.
"The really cool thing about this? It's really hard for people to change their past. However, by changing your present, you are cultivating a different future. By changing what you do and say, and feel, you are seeding your brain to predict differently in the future." — Dr. Barrett
Travel
Cultivating new experiences is a wonderful way to invest in who you will become tomorrow.
Photo: A Balinese home getting ready for a ceremony
Your brain is happy with predicting the same old things for the umpteenth time because those repetitive decisions proved to be rock-solid, safe courses of action.
But what is life if not the ability to jog the old prediction machine and change your routines? The efforts may result in a more robust and resilient brain.
The tricky part might be in convincing your brain that you want to change it. Being creatures of habit, your brain might come up with all sorts of reasons to justify staying put.
In essence our brains can become our own worst enemy, as predictions are notoriously conservative in nature.
We are left with the fact that we have to undermine our prediction machine in order to improve it.
That's why you feel jittery taking those bold steps. Chemicals are being released that are identical to the ones released when you're afraid.
Yet, in order to ultimately make the brain's budget a more flexible process we need to learn new things, expanding our reservoir of experiences. We can replenish our budgets with this newfound diversity, and even earn some dividends in the process.
By temporarily and carefully disbanding our brain's prediction machinery (for example by pre-planning a trip or learning a new language) we evolve.
Safe travels :)