3y
The brain is always predicting what will happen next. It’s how we move, how we interact with the world.
We hallucinate because when we move, our brains try to predict where things will be so they can compensate for the movement. Sometimes these predictions are wrong and that’s why we hallucinate.
Schizophrenics have extreme hallucinations but it turns out this is because their brain has trouble telling the difference between internal and external signals. So when they look at their hand, their brain thinks it’s an alien hand so it hallucinates an alien hand. The same thing happens in everyone else but not as much because most people don’t have severe schizophrenia. But everyone has moments of “the self” and “the other” getting confused in small ways that lead to minor hallucinations.
When dopamine levels go down, you feel depressed. When they go up, you feel manic-depressive (or whatever). But dopamine isn’t just about feelings of pleasure (or lack thereof). It also predicts rewards, which is why when there is too much dopamine in your system you get manic-depressive (or whatever). Because when there is too much dopamine you think everything is a reward and then you expect rewards that never come and then you become angry or depressive (or whatever).
When I was six years old I got lost from my parents at FAO Schwarz on 5th avenue. I cried until my dad found me two minutes later. This memory seems like an accurate recollection of what happened but it isn’t really accurate because if he hadn’t found me two minutes later I would have made up a different story about what happened next based on what would have been more likely to happen if he didn’t find me right away (maybe some stranger would have taken care of me) so now my memory includes those details even though they weren’t true because they were more likely to be true than not true given the alternative scenarios I was imagining at the time.
This applies to everything from remembering your first day of school to what your spouse said last night before going to bed. Our memories are stories we tell ourselves based on subsequent events that occur after the original event occurred but before we remember it happening so our brains make up stories based on those events since they can't know exactly what happened unless someone tells us exactly what happened or unless we experience something similar again later in life so our brains can say "I remember that". This doesn't mean our memories aren't real but rather than they are real only within certain parameters which include subsequent experiences after the original event occurred but before we remembered it happening..
If one person says "it's raining" and another person says "it's sunny" then both people believe their own reality even though reality contradicts itself constantly between them both . This happens all day every day with billions of people interacting with each other, creating trillions upon trillions of instances where people believe their own realities despite reality contradicting itself all around them every second of every day.. This doesn't mean everyone should agree with each other, only that everyone should understand this
Comments (0)
No comments.