Mental Manipulations

Luca Dellanna
Jul 27, 2017 · 1 min read

Motor orders leaving the cortex are by default inhibited by a signal produced by the Basal Ganglia. Only when the action is deemed worth pursuing, the basal ganglia stops inhibiting the motor signal, allowing it to reach the muscles. It is well known in psychology that motor actions are not the only thoughts which might end up inhibited if our mind doesn’t judge them worth pursuing or if it chooses prioritizing others (for example, all tasks requiring concentration: mental manipulations, such as calculus, planning, imagination, rotation of objects in the mind’s eye, and so on).

I suggest that those mental manipulations have a lot in common, from a neurological point of view, with physical manipulations (actions). In particular, I suppose that both originate from the same cortex layer (L5) and that both are by default inhibited by the basal ganglia. In other words, non-intuitive thoughts are actions of the mind (better said, internal actions).

If this was true, it would explain psychological processes such as repression (of thoughts and actions), commitment to failure (applied both to thoughts and actions), and so on.

I plan to write more on the subject in the future.

Thought models

Mental models on human perception and decision making. Know yourself to change yourself.

    Luca Dellanna

    Written by

    Author of some books on emergent human behavior. Read more at luca-dellanna.com. Twitter: @DellAnnaLuca

    Thought models

    Mental models on human perception and decision making. Know yourself to change yourself.

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