neuroVector

Classic experiments in neuroscience suggest that our brains generate an action before we're consciously aware of making the choice, suggesting our experience of having complete conscious control over our actions may be a mistake.

In one of these experiments by Benjamin Libet at the University of California, San Francisco, using an electroencephalogram, Libet monitored their subjects' brains, telling them: "Lift your finger whenever you feel the urge to do so."

It was already known that there is a detectable change in brain activity up to a second before you "spontaneously" lift your finger, but when did the urge occur in the mind?

Amazingly, Libet found that his subjects' change in brain activity occurred 300 milliseconds before they reported the urge to lift their fingers.

This implies that, by measuring your brain activity, I can predict when you are going to have an urge to act. Apparently this simple but freely chosen decision is determined by the preceding brain activity. It is our brains that cause our actions. We just come along for the ride.

Our responses to stimuli are generated in the brain even before we become aware of them. These experiments show that we may not have free will. We are often unaware of the influences that dictate our choices and actions, we assume that our thoughts are deliberate, conscious and above all self generated, when in effect our decisions are to a great degree pre-determined by factors outside of our awareness.

We are making great progress in understanding the thoughts that determine our lives. By imaging the brain in real time, we can now understand its functions.

The Brain Activity Interpretation Competition (PBIAC) which involves predicting the subjective experience of another person from viewing a fMRI, while he or she watches a movie (with an amazing correlations that exceeds the level of inter-rater reliability r>.8) proves that we can now see what others are experiencing in the privacy of their minds.

With neuroVector™'s cutting edge technology we can reproduce the brainwave patterns of individuals with exceptional mental abilities. We are constantly and significantly influenced by words and left-over emotions in ways we're blissfully unaware of. Now we can finally choose the kind of influence that our minds are subjected to.

For over thirty years a wealth of research revealed the non-conscious influences on our behaviour. From the effect of mirrors and the subliminal presentation of happy faces, to the sight of a briefcase and the power of mimicry, the range of factors influencing our behaviour without us realising is overwhelming.

This research undermines the notion that our conscious selves are in control when making decisions. We take cues from the environment which allow us to make assumptions that guide our behaviour. These external cues directly affect our behaviour without ourselves being conscious of them.

In a study by Aaron Kay, people were asked to participate in a financial game. Those who sat at a table with a briefcase on it played the game far more competitively than did participants who sat near a backpack. Later, none of the participants were aware of any aspect of the physical environment that may have influenced their playing strategies (Kay et al. 2004).

In an experiment conducted by John Bargh of Yale University, participants played a computer-based fishing game requiring them to choose how many fish to return to a lake, so preserving stocks for others.

Prior to the game, the participants performed a separate task in which they had to form sentences from randomly arranged words. For half the participants, a fraction of these words pertained to cooperation, which influenced these participants to behave more cooperatively during the game. Once again, the participants were unaware of the influence the earlier words (Bargh et al., 2001).

Even the simple act of holding a cold or hot drink can exert a powerful effect on your reasoning.

In a study by Lawrence Williams and John Bargh, participants were asked to hold a cup of either hot or cold coffee while they answered a few questions. Next the participants were asked whether they would recommend him for a job. The participants who had held the cold coffee said they wouldn't hire him, whereas those who'd held the warm coffee said that they would.

The potential practical applications are startling (Williams & Bargh, 2007). The fact that unnoticed elements in the environment affect our behaviour in ways we're unaware of undermines our sense of control.

This research also shows that the decisions we make are always influenced by our emotional hangovers, without us being conscious of it.

Jennifer Lerner at Harvard University and colleagues demonstrated this by showing student participants one of three film clips chosen to provoke either sadness (The Champ), disgust (Trainspotting) or a neutral emotion (a National Geographic documentary).

Afterwards, the students shown the disgusting clip were willing to pay less for a highlighter set than viewers of the neutral clip, consistent with the idea that disgust triggers a desire to avoid taking in anything new. Viewers of the sad clip were willing to pay more than the 'neutral participants', because sadness triggers a desire for change (Lerner et al., 2004).

The significant people in your life influence your behaviour, without you realising it, even when they're not there. James Shah at Duke University found that subliminally priming a participant with a significant other for example, their mother who they felt wished for them to work hard, subsequently led them to try harder at an anagram task (Shah, 2003).

The effects are being used by marketers and have large effects on customers' buying habits.

That is what advertising is all about, advertisers pair biological cues like attractiveness or nice smells, to manipulate us into buying products.

WEALTH, HEALTH, AND HAPPINESS ARE IN LARGE PART MANIFESTED STATES OF MIND. PEOPLE WHO ADOPT AND MAINTAIN THESE COGNITIVE STATES BRING INTO EXISTENCE TANGIBLE FORMS OF THEM.