• Question: Where do thoughts come from?

    Asked by Kieran to Rose, Maggi, Ben on 12 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Maggi Laurie

      Maggi Laurie answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      This is an extremely difficult and interesting question!

      First of all, we have to think about what ‘thoughts’ are. They are more than simply ‘awareness’, because thoughts usually involve some sort of response to the environment and are more reflective (e.g. that happened and this is how I feel, my opinion is then…). If thoughts are inside the body, then we can use scientific methods to look at where in the body is active when we are thinking.

      As far as I know (this is by no means my area of expertise), the only place in the body that is ‘activated’ when we think is the brain. Different thoughts lead to different ‘patterns’ of brain activation. For example, the place that ‘lights up’ when we think about faces is different to the place that lights up when we think about something else. Therefore, scientists have pinned down areas which ‘link’ to different thoughts (e.g. the amygdala is thought to be involved in fear, as one example).

      Although, when it comes to thinking about more complex things (e.g. thinking about where thoughts come from), lots of areas may light up, and the patterns may look different for different people. This is because we all have different thoughts, and our brains are wired differently. But it’s kind of hard to tell whether different wiring causes different thoughts, or different thoughts cause different wiring. That’s a question we might be able to answer in a few decades!

    • Photo: Rose Turner

      Rose Turner answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      An interesting discovery from neuroscience (the study of the nervous system including the brain) is that sometimes the brain activates before we have consciously decided to do something: for example, you might decide you want to pick up a cup, but your brain was already planning to do it, before you knew or consciously made the decision. So it seems as though the body is implicated in decision-making. Imagine you touched a hot hob on a cooker – you would suddenly pull your hand away before having a chance to think about it and consciously ‘decide’ to. So, in other words, thinking occurs as part of a complex system that involves our brains and the rest of our bodies too (some processes are automatic, and some are conscious. Breathing is a good example of something that is automatic but can also be consciously controlled). As the technology neuroscientists have to study the brain improves, we’ll understand more about how conscious thoughts come about. As Maggi pointed out different types of thinking tend to involve different parts of the brain too, so it’s a very complicated organ!

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