Origins of Thought

Thoughts are the manifestations of our innermost secrets, our deepest regrets, and our most crazy infatuations. They are also the burrowing worms of ideas, the highest philosophy, and our memories and nightmares. A human without thoughts is dead, just as a human with only thoughts is either a philosopher or a failure (no connection between those two).

We always want ourselves to have happy thoughts, good thoughts, and smart thoughts. But what exactly is it that starts a thought, runs a thought, and finishes a thought? And why do people say experience is one of the main factors in considering a man for a job? Why do they also say that thoughts are like butterflies, unable to catch?

The origin of a thought is very clear and unclear at the same time. Let us assume that you are walking along a road, and you see a man lying on the footpath, fast asleep. What goes through your mind? You first think "Oh, what a poor man". From poverty, you go to some of the own difficulties you may have experienced, and begin thanking God that everything worked out for you. Another type of thinking would be "That lazy drunkard". From there, you think of how so many people spend their money on drinking, and how they do so many such bad things. Yet another would be "Look at him, without a care, so happily, calmly asleep.". I can frame thousands of such scenarios, however it would not be nice to just imagine a man on a footpath. Let us leave him in his sleep, and continue. 

Now, what exactly began that chain of thoughts? You would say "The sleeping man started it". And that is true. But how were you able to connect that one sight of him to so many different experiences? You will say, "I remember something." And that, actually is how a thought originates. 

When we see the man, our brain, being the thorough master that it is, begins to connect it to some previous memory that was stored in the grey matter (non-myelinated neurons). From there, start to get some sort of thought, that is amplified as the brain keeps finding some sort of connecting thought for everything. One memory contains many different aspects. It's almost like typing keywords into the Google Search bar, and pressing the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. That's about how many varied results you can get based on what you've gone through.

The running of the thoughts depend on the orientations of synapses and the different neurotransmitters released in different situations. It's also those very neurotransmitters that maintain your moods, your style of speech, and thanks to that, the search-filter. At any given time, the chance of your brain picking a thought to continue the chain will actually depend on your mood at the time. If you're angry, you will naturally be angry at the man, and will pick a memory that is oriented in such a way that you are angry at some other person who is in such an inebriated state.

Similarly, if you are in a very happy state, you might think of the man to be very contented with what he's doing currently. You can think of various other ways in which you might be faced with very conflicted opinions of your brain. 

Now, the ending to this grand, wild electronic impulse chase. You finally reach the endpoint for the thought, which can be in very different forms. First, a natural ending. A natural ending is when your brain brings in the common keywords from all the thoughts that were experienced , and then somehow frames a sentence, that encompasses the whole thought process. You might realise that such a sentence in fact does occur with most of your thoughts. And that is how most of your thoughts end (naturally). Artificially stopping your chain of thoughts is straightforward. You just have to go and work. Keep in mind, you should not do any monotonous work. Do some work that is new, unlearnt by your brain. That starts forming new neural pathways, new memories, thus taking the neural load off the thought and placing it on the work. In such a case, the thought does not have the necessary neurotransmitter-relay impulses to keep propagating, and hence stagnates. 

In fact, this is also why you don't remember monotonous dreams. Dreams connect to your memory, and when you try to wake up, your brain puts that as the most important task of the moment, so the dream transmission stops. But, if you are a light sleeper with your subconscious still awake, you can expect yourself to still remember your dreams when you are rudely awoken by the sound of your blanket falling down to the floor.

But there are a few conditions in which you actually can't stop thinking about something. That is obsession. I think an obsessive thought temporarily or permanently blocks some given neural pathways, thus placing itself as the most important task for the brain to keep programming. So the unknowing brain keeps feeding you more and more information from that single thought, as you combat your emotions. OCD patients (obsessive compulsive disorder) actually might have the same problem of blocked neural pathways due to the absence of certain neurotransmitters. 

Now talking about experience. You experience many things, like your school, your food, your work, and your feelings. Your brain catalogs all of this information that it has obtained by the system of sense organs. All of the different sounds, smells, sights, tastes and touches are recorded and stored at the neural synapses. At a situation that demands some work from you, and you know something about it, your brain begins to search for the given piece of information. Now, by the law of numbers, you know that something will be more if it is in a larger number. In the same way, the larger the number of "work files" at the synapses, the easier it is for your brain to compile all the different data. After all, it is easier to compile a large number of files and read them collectively, than a small number of files that require the effort of finding in the first place. Would you rather pick one ton of rice scattered over a granary or just ten little distinct grains? The ton obviously, right?

In this way, your work experience is counted to be extremely important, because if you know something without thinking too much, you can be considered competent at that given job you're applying for. 

Our thoughts are very difficult to catch. They are like slippery eels in the hands of a baboon whose hands are doused in itching powder. But what does it mean when you can't catch your thoughts? Are they like a bullet train that goes at half the speed of sound? Well, they do travel at near-light speed, but still. It's also very difficult to get back onto your train of thought after you've been derailed by your very loud neighbour who's scolding the maid. 

Now, given that your brain makes your current important thought occupy the most important position, it will seem almost silly for me to say such a thing. But, what actually might happen is that while your brain keeps receiving information, it does not completely "back it up" for the time you are sitting in deep thought. But after some time, your brain sees a discrepancy (rise in tone) in the speech of your neighbour, and senses that it is important, without your thinker actually knowing. Then, the auditory input displaces your thought and makes itself most prominent. That's why you see so many people as though they've been woken from a trance when you shake them too hard. Now your thought train is displaced, and you struggle to regain control of the thought, because the thought, without neural guidance, "fades" away. You notice that you don't remember the thing you were thinking about immediately, and you have to still finish that thought. Then, you realise that you have been thrown out of your own train.

Think about your own thoughts once, and ensure you won't be derailed!

Note: Some of the information here is my hypothesis, and some is well researched. I will begin to add research citations from my next blog onwards.

Edit: That is also how you can adjust to new things. Assume that you have a song that you want to listen to while writing your homework. The trouble will be that if the song is new, your brain will recognise it as new information via the auditory input. Then it starts registering the song instead of sending out the information about what you have to write. Clearly it is a problem. But then, you are hooked on to the song and continue listening to it every evening, till one fine day, you find that the song doesn't have that usual "vibe". That is because your brain has recognised that as old information, and slowly turns into white noise. So to create your homework playlist, either enjoy non-lyrical songs, or, listen to a song that you have listened to for far too many times.