Two Minds Blog

Language is a brain function that we can clearly identify with the Narrative system. Consciousness is one hallmark of the Narrative system, and we often experience conscious thought in our native language, perhaps even if we use a different form of speech in our daily lives. Many people report knowing that they "truly" had learned a foreign language when they suddenly found themselves thinking in it, for instance during a long trip to another country. Another typical Narrative characteristic is an inability to multitask. Many people find that they can write while listening to music but not to talk radio, because the receptive and expressive language functions interfere with one another. Language also has the characteristic abstractness of the Narrative system, allowing for categories within categories like "animal -> mammal -> dog -> miniature poodle." Based on all of these characteristics, we would expect language to be based in the higher cortical a...

It has been said that if you find one human, chances are good that you can find another one within 10 feet. (The most completely alone man in history was probably astronaut Michael Collins, orbiting the moon by himself in the Apollo 11 command module while his colleagues Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were down on the surface; at his furthest rotation from the landing site he would have been about 2,200 miles away, and that lasted only a second or two before he started to approach them again). I have argued that the Narrative mind is particularly good at telling stories about  social  situations -- our interactions with others -- because we are fundamentally social animals. But why  are we so interested in other humans? The mental projections we make about social interactions seem to be produced by the Narrative mind, but our basic orientation toward others comes from a more Intuitive process. In the book Who's In Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain , n...