We tend to believe we're aware of what's happening in our own brains, and also in conscious control of our behavior. But a growing body of neuroscience and psychology research demonstrates that most of what happens inside the brain-- including the processes that cause us to select and execute behaviors-- is beyond our conscious awareness. This has important implications for our eating behavior, body weight, and health, as I explore in my upcoming book The Hungry Brain.
Let me give you a straightforward example that illustrates how little of our brain's activity we're aware of. It focuses on information processing by the visual system, which is one of the best-understood systems of the brain. I drew the basic facts of this example from a recent talk by the accomplished neuroscience researcher Marcus Raichle, who studies patterns of activity in the human brain.
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