Researchers at Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London have managed to image the brain while it processes subconscious subliminal cues. This is important because it demonstrates for the first time how our brain processes subconscious information. We often think of such information as intuition or inspiration from some external source when instead, it seems we develop these “signals” from within.
Dr. Mathias Pessiglione, lead researcher concludes, “We conclude that, even without conscious processing of contextual cues, our brain can learn their reward value and use them to provide a bias on decision making.”
Decision bias?
I think I read that correctly. And just what is a decision bias? It could be thought of as that “still small voice” from your intuition that many think of as their “higher self” or even God. It is that “sense” we get when one choice “feels better” than another although we don’t know why.
My thought about this phenomenon is that we learn many life-important lessons BEFORE we develop reasoning circuitry in our brains. That period of development we call infancy is also when we connect reward with context – the basis of decision bias. This could easily explain why some people feel inspired by a piece of music while another person is totally turned off by it. Context cues that trigger to reward – leading to a decision bias. Continue reading