There are two advantages to the brain using the implicit system. The first is speed. “When the brain finds a task it needs to solve,” writes Baylor neuroscientist David Eagleman in Incognito, “it rewires its own circuitry until it can accomplish this task with maximum efficiency. The task becomes burned into the machinery.… Automatization permits fast decision making. Only when the slow system of consciousness is pushed to the back of the queue can rapid programs do their work. Should I swing forehand or backhand at the approaching tennis ball? With a ninety-mile-per-hour projectile on its
...more
