Neuroscience of Choices

I am grateful that you choose to read this blog. Congratulations! You have successfully decided to get out of your bed and face life as it is. YOU, choose your daily habits, you nurtured them and you are living life as a result of your own decisions (at least I hope that’s the case with everyone above 21 years). Am I gonna question your life decisions? Naahaa…that’s not my place. Am I gonna make you aware of your decision making power? Yeah probably!

Ref: http://dx.doi.org/10.33552/OAJAP.2018.01.000513

Is there a specific region in your brain that helps you make 35,000 choices every day? (On average an adult makes 35000 conscious decisions daily). The answer to that question is both YES and NO. The neocortex (like Neo from The Matrix!) is the advanced and newly developed brain part. It is sharp, witty, and it is a gift given by evolution. This neocortex is the “thinking” brain and its newest part “the prefrontal lobe” is the one said to help us in making decisions. Great! Everything sounds good…until there comes at least 3 circuits to making a choice. 3 circuits to making a choice? Let’s take an example. Getting out of bed to “try and enjoy this era”. If you feel it is a good thing to do..you have activated circuit A of “feeling good”….meaning in the past you have gotten some reward for this behavior and thus this circuit is formed…circuit B is for “feeling Bad”…circuit C is the memory circuit…you analyse the pros and cons of getting out of bed based on various factors and decide what you want to do at present. These circuits involve various brain structures, nuclei and neurochemicals. Hence to make a 1 conscious choice, Mr. President needs to pass bills upon discussing with the cabinet members.

So, if you think what happens in the past stays in the past, you are wrong my friend. Your brain is like a child...always grasping information and making connections/circuits based on your perseverance of the experience, your emotions….YOU have to redirect it and force it to rewire certain things. Every experience, every success, every failure gets registered in your brain in the form of “Good” or “Bad”…what you can work on is circuit C…Analysing, Thinking, Evaluating, Reevaluating your choices…build this circuit to be unbiased/neutral…everything around you might start making sense….world might seem a fair and safe place.