FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Our brain weighs just over 2% of our body weight but it consumes 25% of our calorie intake. It’s a very, very expensive bit of kit. Next time you go on a diet think about those 112 billion neurons howling “more food, more food – how can I think if the fuel tank’s dry?”

Well how do you think? The truth is there are lots of good theories but a lot of ignorance. We only think that we know. We have only just discovered that if it was you who had a dog called Fenton chasing deer in Richmond Park two years ago the dog should have responded to your call. Dog’s brains light up just like ours when they hear their master’s voice.

Thinking about thinking is very hard and makes our brains hurt. Marcus du Sautoy, the Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, confessed he could only do an hour or so of maths before stopping. Isaac Newton on the other hand could apparently think for days at a time.

To think like we all think we should be able to think would feel like  a cross between getting into very cold water and climbing a vertiginous rock face. The complexity of thought and the fact we can kill someone for thinking differently to us or have  ‘un coup de foudre’ when we see someone special summarises why being human as opposed to a dog is so exciting.

Our brain roughly comprises a right and left brain or system one and system two – the intuitive bit and the rational bit. The former is impulsive, a bit adolescent, fast thinking, artistic and (mostly) in charge. The latter, our guardian of common-sense is rational, calculating, weighs up odds, is gullible and rather lazy. Our intuition is full of preconceptions and prejudices and is impressed by vivid presentation. In fact Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel winning psychologist discovered in research that respondents preferred the thought of winning $59 in a “big, blue envelope” much more than simply getting the money.

So much for rationality. This proves to me (as though I needed it proving) that good marketing works. We are hard wired to enjoy good and exciting stories. That makes us impressionable and liable to be more in fear of a terrorist attack than of getting diabetes, when the odds of the latter are several thousand per cent more likely to happen.

The realisation that humanity is pretty irrational and sloppy in the way it thinks is demonstrated every time we turn on the news.

But at least we fall in love and do unusually amazing things occasionally – things we didn’t think we could do.
Which is why I’m off for a snack right now; my brain hurts and I think that the reason  it can’t think straight is because it’s starving….not because I’m stupid.

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