Part - 6
Henrry Molaison (H.M.)
was born on February 26, 1926 in USA. He was a normal kid like other kids till
the age of seven when he faced a sever bicycle accident that caused him
epileptic seizure. It’s a brain disease in which brain muscles are affected and
start to contract that causes electrical activity and chemical changes in nerve
cell. Seizure itself is not a disease but it causes lot of disorders related to
brain that includes uncontrolled jerking movement and lose of momentary
awareness. HM
suffered from partial
seizures for
many years, and then several tonic-clonic seizures following his sixteenth birthday. In 1953 he was referred
to William Beecher Scoville, a neurosurgeon at Hartford Hospital for treatment. A major brain surgery was conducted, the
purpose of surgery was to stop spreading epilepsy in his brain and in the
surgery his Hippocampus was removed. Hippocampus is a major part of brain and
responsible for making our long term memory. Due to surgery HM lost his
explicit memory and he suffered from anterograde amnesia where he can’t make
any new memory and partial retrograde amnesia where he lost some old memories
also. So after surgery, HM was unable to make any new memory medically and he
lost his partial old memories also but some of the surprising things observed
in HM one of them he could still learn new skills.
He
was asked to draw something and when next day he was asked to draw again he
could draw better though he was completely unaware that same thing he drew last
day also. Despite of losing his identity and life events he could do routine
things. He could drive bicycle. An experiment was conducted regularly with him
where some objects were put in front of him and he was asked to touch any two.
There was electric current in one object, after doing this experiment for some
days he started to avoid the electrified object (though he didn’t know the
reason since he didn’t have any memory and every day was first day for him)
when it was asked to him why did he not touch to that object he said I didn’t
know the reason. I just felt, I should have not touched it.
Lot
of other experiments related to feelings, emotions and dreams were conducted
and it was found that those people who had lost their memories still feel
emotions, feelings for familiar things though they believe that this things are
unfamiliar since they didn’t have any memory. All these experiments gave a very
astonishing result and that can be summarized as that except our regular memory
we have one more memory where we store the information unconsciously. The
memory that is responsible for feelings, emotions, routine works, dreams and
that memory is called Subconscious Mind. In my previous articles I explained
that we have two decision making units: one is brain that makes our conscious
decision and other is mind that is responsible for unconscious decisions so
Subconscious mind is memory of mind.
Secret 1: Subconscious Mind is Memory of Mind
HM
was the test subject for the cognitive neuropsychology researchers from 1958 to
till his death and gave important contribution for developing alternative
memory theory. After his death his brain was kept in University of California,
San Diego for study. After study on H.M. it was widely accepted that we have
two types of memories and the second memory was called Implicit Memory or
Subconscious Memory. It may be new subject for cognitive neuropsychologists but
in ancient philosophical literatures lot of already had written about it.
Since, we make our 95% decisions by mind so subconscious mind plays major role
in building our personality type. Subconscious mind is a hard disc of mind,
compare mind as your Intel processor and subconscious mind as Hard Disc. Mind
receives the information from our senses and stores the information in
Subconscious Mind as impression.
Secret 2: Mind store the information in
subconscious mind as Impression
One
of the major difference between our regular memory (Explicit memory) and our
Subconscious mind (Implicit memory) is, in our regular memory we store the
information as reasoning of facts while in subconscious mind we store as
impression like if you ask to an amnesic patient (who can’t make new memories)
that what breakfast they had in the morning they won’t be able to recall but if
you ask what is their favorite breakfast they would tell immediately. Same
happened with HM in conditioning experiment where he didn’t know why he avoided
electrified object but he was aware there was something wrong in that object.
Every information has two aspects one is gross and other is subtle. Like gross
information about the orange is round shape, orange color while subtle
information is simply you like or not like it. So in our regular memory we
store gross information while in our subconscious mind we store subtle memory
that’s the reason that despite of losing the memory amnesiac patient still can
do their routine things in which they were expert before losing memory like how
to swim, how to drive the car, how to play piano even toughest thing like how
to give injection etc.
One
of the classic cases is a British Musicologist Clive Wearing. He was suffering
from both anterograde and retrograde amnesia. He can’t remember anything more
than 10 seconds. His memory loss was so severe that when he goes out dining
with his wife, he can remember the name of the food however he cannot link it
with taste, as he forgets what food he is eating by the time it had reached his
mouth. But Wearing still
could recall how to play the piano and conduct a choir – all this despite
having no recollection of having received a musical education. It shows that
learning new skill and proficiency in any skill is part of subconscious mind.
Secret 3: Proficiency in any skill is achieved
by Subconscious Mind
Brian
store the information in explicit memory and whenever need to retrieve the
information, Brain send the instruction to memory like if someone ask you what
is capital of France ? Brain will send the instruction to memory, memory will
search the information that is already stored and send the detail to Brain but
case is different in case of subconscious mind. For any information required,
mind doesn’t need to send instruction to subconscious mind. Subconscious mind’s
function is automatic and it keep sending thoughts to mind continuously. Even
mind doesn’t require yet subconscious mind will keep sending thoughts to mind
and if you want to stop it yet you can’t turn it of this process. Do you want
to try? Close your eyes close your ears and sit in a separate place and observe
what is coming in your mind. All that thoughts that are coming that time in
your mind are from your subconscious mind. It works like google, as you type,
you get auto suggestions. Want to try? Apple…………..what came automatically in
your mind a fruit or a cell phone?
Secret 4: Subconscious mind automatically keep
sending thoughts to Mind
You
are sitting in a class room and someone enters in the room and your mood
becomes good or you become upset how does it happen? It is auto-suggestion
feature of subconscious mind. Weather you demand or not your subconscious mind
will send your impression related to that person, place or thing. Since as
explained earlier that subconscious mind is a memory box it keeps storing our
impression towards external world and just imagine, from your birth you are
storing impressions in your subconscious mind and till now how much impressions
you already have stored in your subconscious mind. Mind is completely depends
upon impression stored previously in subconscious mind and what impression
Subconscious mind send to mind. So it’s completely subjective and different
persons evaluate same situation differently.
Secret 5: Our Mind is dependent on the thoughts
previously stored in Subconscious Mind
We
made our 95% decision unconsciously (by mind) so it’s very important to
understand how does mind function. You are driving and a black coloured cat
crossed your path some people get scared some people ignore it. You faced a
major failure in your life, some people succumb to situation while some remains
rock strong and face the situation with enthusiasm. So how does it happen? It
all depends upon how mind evaluate the situation and for evaluation of
situation Mind is completely dependent on the thoughts that you previously
stored in your subconscious mind. Mind doesn’t know maths or logics.
Mind knows only emotions and whenever it receive any information from five
senses it store that information into subconscious mind as thought or
impression and this process is called cognition. An emotion is byproduct of
cognition. When mind store the thought into subconscious mind a certain
chemical hormone is released by amygdala (part of brain).
Secret 6: Emotion is byproduct of cognition
function of mind
Mind
program a particular emotion for particular thought and by controlling mind we
can reprogram this function. Mind associates a particular type of emotion with
particular thought. For the example suppose an ice cream is served to you. You
taste the ice-cream and your tongue sends the subtle information of that
ice-cream to your mind. Your mind stores this information in your subconscious
mind as “Delicious Ice-cream” and attached an emotion with that ice-cream that
emotion may be pleasure. As explained earlier your subconscious mind
automatically send that thought to mind again for cognition and mind store
again that same thought in subconscious mind and release same emotion and it
becomes cyclic process. May times especially in when you are so happy or scared
you keep thinking same and same thought again if you want to stop you can’t
stop it. It happens due to the same concept explained above. Relationship of
mind and subconscious mind can be understood as relationship of seed and food.
Seed becomes tree, tree gives fruit and fruit again gives seed and so on.
Subconscious mind is the major source of thoughts to mind. Everyday mind
receives thousands of thoughts and these thoughts are received from two
sources:
- 1. External world (By Senses)
- 2. Subconscious Mind
Around 90% of thoughts
received by mind par day are from subconscious mind. We can disconnect
ourselves from external world by closing eyes, ears etc but we can’t disconnect
ourselves from subconscious mind that keep sending thoughts to mind.
Secret 7: Mind receives thoughts from external world and
subconscious mind.
To
be continued .......................................................
