Do you have "reflex" thoughts?

This question was prompted by this thread.

and the following sub-topic which developed...

Makes sense, no - since it does appear our brains do lots of simplifying of life for us - and having a sort of reflex response to familiar things makes sense in terms of not having to reinvent the wheel every time.

One wonders if emotional reactions might also become paired to such habitual (rather than "reflex"?) responses, hence farther intensifying a no longer consciously thought out response.

I am certainly aware, when I wish to really consider a new argument about a familiar concept, of putting aside in a semi-conscious way previous thoughts and responses - including emotional ones.

Hi Dlowan,

I'm also aware of becoming tense or nervous sometimes when particular topics come up. I have learned to recognize this response and to control it consciously, but I do have to catch it every time and intentionally control it. So it seems to be a reflex.

Just as our eyes can only focus on a small point at one time, but our peripheral vision continues to take in everything around us, our brains can focus on single ideas while reacting to other ideas reflexively.

I dunno - experience something funny in my opinion, I was just in Mexico for a 7 days and after about the 3rd day Spanish words were abounding in my head - heck I new the words but in dictionary type manner.

Yeh, the same thing happens to me. I get that with accents as well (southern or british for example). If I hear them, they ring in my head for days.

I hate when you go somewhere different for a few days but when you come back everyone wonders why you are talking with an accent

Ahh, this question reverberates, certainly with the language and thought thread.

I studied physiological psyche in the sixties, thus am way behind, though I have done the odd bit of reading whenever learning is in some headline or other. What I understood then, was that there are nerve net reticuli that form, that are eased pathways, and that various amounts of energy are required to forge new ones.

I think it was the language and thought thread, where Craven gave a link or comment re not just new synapses connecting with new learning, but that, and let me distinguish this, maybe it wasn't connected to new learning, there is evidence of new nerve formation (dendrites?) - something more than just new synapse meetings.

Whatever, I want this to be explored and to hear about it.
As a practical consideration in my own life, I know that new ways of thinking are challenging, and might on my own posit lazy bone zone. Very understandable both psychologically and biochemically/biophysically. (Biophysics, damn, I declined a job in a biophysics lab, one of life's mistakes.)

All this makes me wonder all sorts of things, such as the play of emotions re impact for shutting off routes.
...but most, a key interest for me, is what the hell is the role of curiosity? Curiosity seems to me to be one of the most valuable traits there are. Curiosity is what carries us across rivers of no-no alligators.

I agree with rosborne's first post, dlowan, but I like the use of, is it called the reflex arc, better than knee jerk. The reflex arc is formed or developed, isn't it? The literal knee jerk is inborn. Our thoughts are more likely to be habitual, but I really think that some are genuine reflexs.

Of course, I've been wrong before.

Yes, we all do. They're called stereotypes. It's a psychological phenomenaom called the norm of least cognitive effort or something like that. Basically boils down to that we can realistically form multifaced viewpoints and perspectives on very few things in the world. The rest of them, we associate with the response most conditioned with the thought. In such cases, we can overcome these inherent reflexes/stereotypes. But we need to conscioulsy work to do it.

I just had a danged reflex thought after smaking my shin on the dishwasher!

For all I know, that just might be a true reflex.

Why not?

The "reflexes" we are all familiar with involve nerves connecting muscle tissue and the lower part of the central nervous system (spinal cord), so why not those involved with higher CNS activity?

The "muscle memory" that athletes (including singers, pianist, typist, etc) allude to is merely the burning of deeper and familiar pathways that allows an individual organism to better adapt to its environment on a "real-time" phenotypical basis. Yes we do see the growing and shrinking of neural dendrites, the individual nerve cell's effort to reach out and (almost) touch another. This allows for extraordinary flexibility in an organism's lifetime responses to stimuli. Our ability for our bodies to so adapt probably has its origins way, way, back (at least paramecia I'm thinking).

The limiting side of this coin, which has been noted in this thread, is also interesting: once this pathway is created it becomes favored and the individual's response to given stimuli or initial thoughts becomes less varied and necessarily less diverse. We now see the learning of a second language and the redefining of a secondary pathway for those suffering from spinal cord damage (say re-learning how to walk) is almost precluded, given the elapse of time, and certainly not as refined as the original pathway. Perhaps, this applies to the organized concert of neuronal firing we know as abstract thinking.

Is this why we see new mathematical and scientific paradigms emanating from mainly those individuals before they become 30 years of age? Indeed, is this the source of Einstein's frustration in trying to rectify his thoughts with a comprehensive Grand Unified Theory? His neural pathways, already laid down, analogous to roads leading him to dead ends in design space?

JM

Rosborne979, this topic is huge and endlessly fascinating. Yes, the brain has stored reflexes or responses, such as the quick drawback from fire; but false reflexes can be stored when trauma has caused permanent change in the brain, making it difficult to keep an open mind, as in your quote:


Read the entire article if you have time, but i have included some excerpts:

http://www.childtrauma.org/ctamaterials/memories.asp

Memories of Fear
How the Brain Stores and Retrieves Physiologic States,
Feelings, Behaviors and Thoughts from Traumatic Events


Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.

The Child Trauma Academy
www.ChildTrauma.org

This is an Academy version of a chapter originally appearing

in "Splintered Reflections: Images of the Body in Trauma"

(Edited by J. Goodwin and R. Attias) Basic Books (1999)
-------------------------------------------------------------

And in each of the diverse brain systems which mediate

specific functions, some element of previous experience is

stored.

This storage involves complex neuromolecular processes -

use-dependent changes in synaptic microarchitecture and

intracellular alterations in various important chemicals

involved in cellular communication and gene expression (see

Kandel, 1989). The details - those that are known - are

outside the scope of this chapter. Yet to understand that the

physical properties of neurons change with experience is

crucial to understanding the concept of memory. Simply stated

- the brain changes with experience - all experience, good

and bad. The focus of this chapter is how the brain changes

by storing elements of a traumatic experience.
===============================

A cascade of patterned neuronal activity is initiated in

these primitive areas of the brain which moves up to more

complex parts of the brain. In addition to sending these

signals to higher parts of the brain, this cascade of

activity also initiates a set of brainstem and midbrain

?'responses' to the new information from the environment,

allowing the individual to react in a near-reflexive fashion.

In many instances, the brain's response to incoming sensory

information will take place well before the signals can get

to the higher, cortical parts of the brain where they are

?'interpreted'.

Activation of these key systems results in patterns of

neuronal activation which move from brain stem through mid

brain, to thalamic, limbic and cortical areas. At the level

of the brain stem and midbrain, there is very little

subjective perception. It is at the level of the thalamus and

the limbic areas that the actual sensation of anxiety arises.

It is only after communication with cortical areas that the

individual is able to make more complex, cognitive

associations which allow interpretation of that internal

state of anxiety (Singer, 1995).
=======================

Simply stated, then, the fear response will involve a

tremendous mobilization and activation of systems distributed

throughout the brain: terror involves cortical, limbic,

midbrain and brainstem-based neurophysiology (see Gorman,

Liebowitz, Fyer, & Stein, 1989). Because the neuronal systems

alter themselves in a ?'use-dependent' way in response to

patterned, repetitive neuronal activation, a state of terror

will result in patterned, repetitive neuronal activation in

this distributed and diverse set of brain systems - resulting

in a set of ?'memories.' In each of these areas -- mediating

cognitive, motor, emotional and state-regulation ?- elements

of the traumatic event will be ?'stored.' Memories of trauma

have been created (see Terr, 1983; Pynoos and Nader, 1989;

Schwarz and Kowalski, 1991; Schwarz and Perry; 1994).
===========================

The physiological hyper-reactivity of post-traumatic stress

disorder is a cue-evoked ?'state' memory (see Figures 3, 4 and

5). The brain has taken a pattern of neuronal activation

previously associated with fear and now, will ?'act' in

response to this false signal. The ?'recall' of traumatic

state memories underlies many of the abnormally persistent

characteristics of the once-adaptive response to threat (see

Perry, in press; Perry 1993; Perry, 1994). This persistence

of the ?'fear' state and the ability of now non-threatening

cues to become paired to a full blown threat response is

related to the remarkable capacity of the human brain to make

associations.

I don't know what Diane said (and please give me a synopsis), but if one has a reflex, they are acting before any real cognitive process happens, the superego is never tapped. So, we wouldn't be able to stop the reflex in time.

Individual, that article was focused on reactions to fear. It doesn't address the entire question that rosborne was asking.

If an event is traumatic enough, even similar cues that resemble the original event, can cause a false reaction--even false memories. I will copy the last few sentences of the article which explain much better than I ever could.

Thanks

A friend of mine related the following:



I found this interesting, perhaps a true unadulterated thought reflex demonstrated in the former juvenile observation and that of the latter adult...what?

JM

JM, what a wonderfu example of how different a child's brain is to that of an adult. Children are still capable of fantasy and even of making something in which they believe into reality in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary.

In the case of trauma, adults learn to do that, but with a destructive outcome.

What is amazing to me is that our brains can work so quickly to connect to a reflex that is not appropriate to the event. You'd think that a reflex would be too immediate for that to happen.

Would you mind expanding on that?