Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality by Anil Seth PDF

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Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality by Anil Seth

For my moments of silence, I chose to sit at a desk far away from others at our campus library. It was difficult to not fixate on a singular object, which I often catch myself doing when getting focused on a thought. I spent a significant portion of this time following other people with my eyes and noticing the individuality in each person. Everyone that walked by my desk, despite being so different, was also having similar conscious experiences as I was. They could feel the chill of the air conditioning, the sounds of keyboards clicking, and the smell of the sandwiches cooking in the Starbucks. Not all of our experiences were the same; however, direct and focused awareness of my sensations caused me to focus more strongly on my breathing, which felt as if I had to think about inhaling and exhaling rather than allowing my body to unconsciously do so. Regardless if everyone in the library was breathing or not, every breath has a different pattern, every heart is beating at a different time, and everyone experiences, thinks, and perceives in different ways. A more scientific example on how perception is different for everyone is how the brain can adapt for those with disabilities. Individuals that have been blind since infancy still use their visual cortex, despite their eyes not being able process information. Their visual cortex adapts to respond to braille and other objects by touch. Individuals with undamaged vision use this same part of the brain in a completely different way, while processing the same information. In the video “Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality” Anil Seth describes how our perceptions of the world are mostly our brains making guesses, which stems from our visual cortexes. Even in times where our interpretation of what we’re seeing seems to change, the sensory information itself remains the same, but our brain’s guesses alter to find the cause. With

this logic, hallucinations can be described as uncontrolled perception, the brain’s perceptions aren’t made rational by sensory information. Using this same idea, what we perceive is technically considered controlled hallucinations. These controlled hallucinations we all share is our combined idea of reality. Although when I sit close to others in the library, it seems as though everyone is sharing a similar experience, no two realities are truly the same. I spent my few minutes of silence sitting in my apartment. Although I often do this to complete assignments and work, it was a completely different experience to not fixate on a particular object or activity. Closing my eyes changed my environment completely. I became much more aware of my body and my surroundings. I could feel the coolness of the metal part of my chair, the clothes I was wearing on my skin, and started to focus a lot more on my breathing. The most significant observation I had was what I was hearing. I heard noises that I previously wasn’t conscious of, such as the sound of traffic outside, the distant trains, and even the ticking of the clock in my living room. Shutting off one of my senses allowed me to place my focus elsewhere. The noises from the train whistle are an example of periodic complex tones, this is when a singular note is held for an extended amount of time, which your brain recognizes as identical. The smaller noises I heard are examples of aperiodic complex tones; my roommate having a phone call in the next room, cars going over speed bumps, and doors closing in the hallway of my building. These noises lacked auditory consistency and were more complicated than the singular tone of the train. In the TedTalk, Anil Seth gives an in-depth description of how our perception compares to others. Despite the fact that we may all have similar experiences and interact with each other constantly, no two people perceive their environment in exactly the same way. Our sense of

perception is simply our brain’s best guess, a “controlled hallucination”. It is these controlled hallucinations combined that allow us to have what we call reality. When I was looking out my window, I was the only person activity perceiving all of the stimuli. Regardless if everyone in the building heard the train; they could not hear the ticking of my clock, they could not feel my sweatshirt touching my arm, or smell the coffee on my desk. We are all our own people with individual experiences....