Vague and mystic terms like consciousness, will and emotions can be explained in more concrete terms through the intuitive algorithm (IA) concept. IA suggests that phenomenally intelligent nerve cells make the mind a powerful information processor and can explain universally recognized human behavior, including its unique foibles. For IA, consciousness can be likened to the feel of breeze on the leaves of a banyan tree. The neural correlates of consciousness logically point to the perceptions of the leaves and not to the processes of the tree. All the nuclei, the intelligent groups of nerve cells, within your brain bear a strong resemblance to the banyan tree, with its spreading branches (dendrites) and numerous roots (axons).
The branches of nuclei perceive patterns in the environment on the periphery and dispatch recognition signals through their roots. There are receptors on the branches of your olfactory tree, which evaluate molecules in the air. Its roots, (axons of those cells) transmit messages, indicating the recognition of the fragrance of orange, or the smell of sweat. Similarly, the branches of the somesthetic association tree perceive the sense of touch and its roots signal recognition of a touched object. In practice, if this recognition-of-objects-by-touch "tree" is injured, you cannot recognize a pair of scissors by touch, when your eyes are closed. If the recognition-of-touch tree remains intact, you will still be able to feel the scissors. By recognizing and responding to patterns, these trees process the vast reaches of your intelligence.
IA suggests that those trees store and use memories of combinations for recognition. Among many such nuclei, smells were recently reported to be recognized through a coding process, where the olfactory tree recognized different combinations of receptor signals. If the tree had receptors, identified as A, B, C and so on to Z, it could then fire, when it received inputs at ABC, or DEF. It recognized those combinations. The tree could identify ABC and would be inhibited for ABD. The experiments of the scientists revealed that even slight changes in chemical structure activated distinctly different combinations of receptors. The olfactory tree stored such codes and indicated that octanol smelled like oranges, while the similar compound, octanoic acid, smelled like sweat. A Nobel Prize acknowledged that discovery in 2004. IA suggests that the intuitive intelligence of the olfactory tree derives from its capacity to remember and sensitively recognize trillions of combinatorial codes.
It is established that the wisdom of nature is founded on the accumulation, over millions of years, of unbelievably large lodes of such operating instructions. If the total DNA codes in a grown human body (each cell contains a sequence of over 3 billion chemical nucleotide bases) were crammed into 500 page instruction manuals, those books would fill the 450 kilometer Grand Canyon fifty times over! Such massive archives of actionable instructions also operate within the banyan trees of your nervous system. Vast galaxies of subterranean knowledge, stored as similar combinatorial codes, manage your perceptions, emotions and drives. Those codes manage your every activity, not you.
The banyan trees within your brain translate a complex and timely knowledge of your world within a few thousandths of a second. Walter Freeman, the famous neurobiologist summed up that amazing competence. "The cognitive guys think it's just impossible to keep throwing everything you've got into the computation every time. But, that is exactly what the brain does. Consciousness is about bringing your entire history to bear on your next step, your next breath, your next moment." Science is yet to make the obvious announcement that your nervous system uses combinatorial codes to store cubic miles of data within your nerve cells. They have also not yet discovered that intuition, an elimination algorithm, can instantly extract the best and most appropriate answer from that information.
Just as naturally as lilies bloom in the field, your words of love, or anger originate from one of the intelligences residing in the myriad banyan trees within your brain. Both your experience and the findings of science suggest that you have a separately identifiable existence as you perch on one of those trees as an intangible awareness. That proof lies in the significant time lag between actual neural processes and your awareness of them. Your experience will show that your awareness of speech comes only after your network speaks. Within the blink of an eye, the system gathers ideas, locates words, arranges them grammatically and moves your muscles to enable speech. You become aware of your choice of words after they are uttered.
The same time lag, highlighting the distinct separation between neural functions and conscious awareness was measured by the famous experiments of Benjamin Libet. These tests were deceptively simple. He timed the neural cues in subjects while they voluntarily pressed a button. Each time they decided to press down, they were also to note down the location on a computer screen, of a dot, which changed its position every 43 milliseconds. The exact moment of a conscious decision to act, was compared to measurable activity in the system for the initiation of that muscle movement. After many experiments with many subjects, Libet discovered that activity in the motor areas began 350 milliseconds before the subject consciously decided to press the button. Since the motor activity begins before conscious awareness, it is obvious that it is not the intangible you, but the system, which decides to move even your little finger.
Those numerous banyan trees intuitively interact within your nervous system. They have access to vast coded archives of routines followed, during millions of years of experiences, in achieving varied objectives. Each living moment, the system simultaneously evaluates many strategies for applying these routines to cope with the challenges of life. Specific trees are dedicated to specific strategies. One navigates aggressively. Another follows defensive strategies. Yet another seeks relaxation of the stresses of life through play. Yet another jealously seeks to be the best in its community. Still another is caring and protective of the tribe. The emotions of anger, fear, laughter, envy, or love define some of these focused strategies. Specific trees, (organs in the limbic system, in the mammalian part of your brain), are activated for fear, anger, guilt, or love. Operating as a strategy hub, the limbic system makes swift choices between competing and conflicting strategies to allocate control of the whole system to a single tree.
The chosen tree primes your brain to adjust to its distinct inherited mode of behavior. If you suddenly have to walk a plank five hundred feet above ground, the defensive tree will urgently signal fear. Registering those frantic signals, the strategy hub will switch control to that tree. With fear in control, the tree will stiffen you into immobility, instantly suppressing your normal ability to stroll down a plank. Instead of walking, you would prefer to lie down and hold the sides. Even while fear can debilitate you, love can inspire you to achieve impossible tasks. Your behavior is decided by the tree which takes charge of your system. You are merely a belated observer of the current strategy, whether it be fearful retreat, aggressive attack, or jealous outburst.
You have one advantage. Superior to the ancient marble sized nuclei in the mammalian regions, a giant tree resides in the prefrontal regions of your brain. Originating as an investigative entity with millions of years of evolutionary knowledge and experience, it occupies cortical regions recently augmented to house a new human competence. It is the broadest tree in the network and is logically the fabled "deep wisdom within." Science points to this tree as the seat of your consciousness. Sages from ancient times have sung praises of a control of your mind by this tree. Untouched by emotions and impregnable to the cuts and thrusts of capricious fortune, it exists with the pure perception of a rational intelligence, which sees both success and tragedy as similar situations. It is undisturbed by the worries and fears of its lesser siblings.
The consciousness tree processes your perceptions and its roots deliver the will and views of your spirit. It dispenses the verdicts of your conscience, telling you what is right and wrong. Other siblings in the limbic system deliver the fears and desires of the flesh. Sadly, the gentle will of your spirit competes with a slew of searing emotions. Inherited combinatorial codes are designed to permit a single group of linked emotions, or will, to control your attention, conscious thoughts and movements. If the guilt, or anger of lesser trees dominate, you will then feel guilt, or anger to the exclusion of all else. Those trees make your decisions. Their output patterns produce motor instructions, which direct attention, or movements.
You have only this uniquely subjective awareness of what the system perceives to be the outcome of the intuitive process. It is at the leaves (synapses) of the consciousness tree that electrical impulses enter the boundaries of your ethereal awareness. Combinatorial codes process everything else. You exist in a transcendental information dimension, where neural perceptions of the network touch the leaves of the branches of your consciousness tree. But the great mystery remains that, while nerve impulses course through the whole system, only the neural correlates of consciousness generate your mystic awareness. Could those leaves be a cosmic information interface?
In the website Effective Mind Control Abraham Thomas suggests that, since the human mind is a pattern recognition entity, your rational prefrontal regions can effectively control your mind by inhibiting your lower emotional levels of consciousness.
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