Yesterday we spoke briefly of the limitations on the brains processing power and how this affects our ability to communicate. To fully understand what information our brains decide is worth paying attention to, let’s talk a bit more in depth about what our brain does and why.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago the ancestors of modern man roamed the earth with little else running through their mind but eating and staying out of harms way so that they would have the ability to spread their genes… In fact, they really didn’t have the capacity for cognitive thought, at least not the way we (modern man) think.
Morning would role around and greet them with a sensation that to them meant find food. They didn’t know to call it hunger because language didn’t exist. During their foraging if something moved unexpectedly, the burning sensation in their chest caused them to run and don’t look back… And every chance they got, when they would see a woman… well, you know what they would try… And later, when the sun went down, they went to sleep so that they could do it all over again. There was no communication because it didn’t exist. Now this went on for a long time, hundreds of thousands of years… and the result is a brain that is amazingly good at keeping us safe from danger so that we may live long enough to have sex and spread our genes. It took millions of years to develop what we will call our “old” brain.
Eventually, while foraging one of these guys randomly hit a squirrel with a stick and killed it for food… voila, they learned how to use a tool. Their family ate better, lived longer and was better able to spread their genes as a result. The prefrontal cortex grew a little from this. Then another one dropped some seeds near their cave mistakenly… a few months later some plants grew and they ate them… farming was invented. Their family ate better, lived longer and was better able to spread their genes. The prefrontal cortex grew a little more. Then another one let out a quick shrill when scared while hunting… this warned his fellow hunters so they could avoid danger and language was born. These guys learned to communicate; their prefrontal grew even more….
Now fast forward to today… all of this farming, future planning and communicating has developed a comparatively massive prefrontal cortex that gives us what we know as cognition and/or consciousness. This is what gives us our top-down executive control.
Our brain serves two major stimuli processing functions. First, it nonconsciously seeks predictability and pattern. This has evolved to be the best way to keep the individual alive long enough to propagate their genes. As a result, for the most part our “old brain only makes us conscious of difference, or events/actions that veer from an established pattern. This is why you can drive to work and not even think about it until you see a car swerving ahead of you… it broke “pattern” and your mind is registering this so that you can appropriately deal with it. Second, you have your working memory component that interacts with your prefrontal cortex and is a major determinant of your visual attention. This holds relevant and functioning “concepts” that are of importance to you so that it may notify you when something of significance comes into your site. This is due to the wonderfully evolved prefrontal cortex which gives us the magically ability to understand the future and language among other things. In summary, one keeps us safe, the other helps us navigate the world in a focused manner.
Now, the point of this lesson in history is to illustrate that we have two major functions going on cerebrally at any given time. These two functions are what is guiding our attention and therefore what and how our brain is processing stimuli. This has a large role in determining how and what we communicate to people. Now this is an amazing system and although it has it’s bugs that will be worked out as time goes on… it works pretty well. The inextricable side effect of this is that when events occur around you, you not only will NOT register and store the entirety of the event, you will only be able to communicate it back in your own personally biased way. This is incredibly important to understand in communicating with each other. There are predictable “gaps” in communication that result from this and by being aware of them, we equip ourselves with amazing tools to communicate with clarity when necessary. Tomorrow we will begin to talk about the specific gaps, how to recognize them and what we can to remedy this.
Communication Expert
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