How the Brain Thinks

After finishing a Masters Dissertation in 1995 on the different ways cognitive psychologists researched Judgement and Decision Making, I set out to understand what was happening in that inscrutable black box inside our head that was out of reach. I was lucky that new neuroscience techniques allowed us for the first time to see the brain thinking. Even so, it took me 20 years while continuing to work as a General Practitioner part time. The result is my book How the Brain Thinks.

In the book I show how a hierarchy of functions within the brain produces attention, consciousness, emotion, memory and perception. These are largely mediated by frontal cortical circuits.

I use the simple acronym FACE MaP, a combination of:

F for frontal cortex
A for attention
C for consciousness
E for emotion
M for memory
and
P for perception

I have not included language within the scope of this book. Language is an incredibly important tool to modern humans, useful in sub-vocal rehearsal and producing and reacting with our internal narrative, our voice within, and enabling the variety of communications we have today. But it is not fundamental and essential to how we think. We can think in other ways.

The elements of FACE MaP explained

The large frontal cortex is close to major areas involved in memory, emotion and movement, playing a major role in personality and perception. It is the driver, the overseer, the executor, heavily involved with attention and working-memory and able to access long-term memory and emotion. It is wakefully prescient, suffusing consciousness with the thoughts of who we are and why we are here, where we want to go, and how to get there. It gives us the capability to choose what we respond to. Two important areas are the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The VMPFC is involved in fast and slow emotional processing, and connections with the cingulate cortex enables it to also play a part in both fast and slow decision-making. The DLPFC helps carry out the closely related functions of working-memory and attention.

My belief is that most behaviour can be understood if we understand FACE MaP.

Dr Graham Desborough

Attention is the bright light that illuminates and consciousness is said to be the web that holds thought together. But consciousness may be a human construct and may be inwardly focused attention in a state of wakefulness that produces a heightened awareness. It could be related to perception. Maybe it is attentionally directed perception itself?

An important part of consciousness is our internal narrative, that voice within, and our default mode network. These are processes useful in guiding us through our day. Are they a large part of consciousness? A large part of attention is mediated by the DLPFC circuits.

Emotion lies at the core of our decision-making, influencing the food we buy, the partner we choose, how we drive on the motorway, how we vote and what or who we ‘like’ on Facebook. It underlies the success of emojis and gifs and art. Because of the way the brain has evolved, we are essentially emotional beings who also think — like, lizards with a cortex. But what is an emotion and how is it distinct from feeling? Confusion reigns around the words emotion, feelings and affect, emotional states and mood.

Emotion exists unseen, is simply ‘like’ or ‘dislike’, like so much in our current vitriolic echo-chamber driven world. Feelings are like attention — showcased and able to be discussed and modified.

Memory, is the foundation of our habits, beliefs and attitudes and can be heavily involved with emotion. Memory is always in the background, readily available, never constant, and changed by time itself and by the new experiences time brings.

Wherever we go we record events that we have paid attention to. This stored record of experience is called memory. It isn’t perfect, is a semi-stable representation of all we think we know, and is really useful to us in interpreting the present appropriately. But memory is not simply one process. It reflects our complex environment and our role within it and the many ways in which we learn. Memory is plastic, malleable, changed by time and the changing circumstances time brings. It is usually divided into short-term and long-term memory.

Short-term, or working-memory, is our mind’s eye, mainly produced by areas within the frontal cortex that can hold and work on information over time, using consciousness and emotion to produce perception. Amongst other things, it is what we use to create, problem solve, plan and execute our goals.

Long-term memory, on the other hand, is the many roomed storehouse of our knowledge. It can be gained in many ways and recalled at different speeds. It can be classified according to whether consciousness or attention is needed for its use and what type of information it stores, such as semantic memory for words and episodic memory for experience. These latter long-term memory types are formed by acquisition and consolidation then stored, ready for recall when appropriate.

Perception is how we interpret the world around us, relying on attention to showcase, using memory to compare, and emotion to quickly say ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

During perception, mechanical and chemical information is transformed into neural impulses that are then modified in various stages to produce a percept that can then be transferred to memory. But perception can be wrong, having constant biases or illusions that are dangerous if we don’t know about them. Perception is involved in magic, art, beauty and attractiveness, music, placebo, and framing.

My belief is that most behaviour can be understood if we understand FACE MaP.

From now on, I will blog on current articles in the scientific press that can shed further light on the processes within FACE MaP. I will also include studies on language as it has become so important in our modern context.

Dr Graham Desborough is a general practitioner, writer, mountaineer and photographer. If you like this post, you can join his mailing list at drgrahamdesborough.com or check out his book How the Brain Thinks.