Chemistry Facts and Maya: How the Brain Manipulates Reality
We are like “manufacturer-locked” smartphones
Chemistry Facts: How the Brain Manipulates Reality -AI Image by Author (Bing).
While perusing neuroscience writings on the internet, I happened upon a set of captivating revelations that drastically reshaped my grasp of time’s fundamental character. I did not come across any specific individual researcher. Still, instead, the cumulative insights from these investigations unveiled how my very own brain can wield influence over my personal, subjective experience of the progression of temporal passage.
It all began when I read about a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine and its fundamental role in shaping our experience of time. According to the studies, acetylcholine facilitates encoding our experiences into short-term memory during wakefulness, capturing the fragments of my lived reality as they stream through my consciousness, activating specific neural circuits in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
Levels
However, it was acetylcholine’s role during sleep that truly captured my attention. It acts in areas of the brain such as the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. When levels of acetylcholine decrease during the slow-wave stage of NREM sleep, my brain enters a state of reduced neural activity characterized by slow, synchronized neural oscillations. It is precisely at this moment that something extraordinary occurs.
Rather than simply archiving my memories of the day, my brain seems to perform a veritable act of “temporal reorganization” of my experiences. Instead of preserving them as fixed snapshots, my brain subjects them to a process of “refusion,” manipulating their timing to adapt them to a new context. This process appears to involve the interaction between the hippocampus, responsible for encoding episodic memories, and the prefrontal cortex, which processes temporal information.
Furnace
It is as if the great blast furnace of my mind remelts my memories, rewriting their temporal perception. This explains why upon awakening, I tend to feel more distant from the memories of the previous evening, while those from the daytime nap remain fresher and more vivid in my memory: the nighttime reorganization has altered the temporal encoding of these memories.
I mean “distant” regardless of the number of hours spent. I am referring to a more perceptual distance.
During nighttime sleep, my brain completes a full cycle of consolidation and temporal reorganization, reprocessing my memories into a new temporal sequence. This process seems to be facilitated by the slow brain waves during NREM sleep, which allow for a more efficient transfer of memories from short-term to long-term memory.
And…so?
This revelation about the illusory nature of time and reality evokes the ancient wisdom of Vedanta philosophy.
“The mind, filled with desires, creates the illusory world (Maya) like a dream. When the mind is purified, the reality of the Self is revealed.”
This quote is found in the text “Vivekachudamani” by the Indian philosopher Adi Shankara.
If my mind, also through neurological processes like the action of acetylcholine and other neurotransmitters, can so radically shape my perception of time, then what other aspects of my subjective experience might be mere fabrications moulded by the neural architecture of consciousness itself? Is the entire fabric of reality as I know it simply an intricate illusion woven by the loom of my mind? If that is the case, then what profound truths await to be unveiled once the veil of Maya is lifted?
We are like “manufacturer-locked” smartphones: bound to the limited perspective defined by our mental conditioning. To access the infinite potential of the All-Encompassing Chip, we must first become un-branded, fully conscious of the boundless energy pulsating beyond the illusory separation of our minds.
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