Two types of thinking have a time-sharing deal going on in your brain.
- Your DMN and DAT neural networks cooperate by staying out of each other’s way.
- FMRI scans reveal a surprising temporal dance.
- When both systems are at the same activity level, boom, you’re unconscious.
While consciousness remains “the hard problem” — as in what exactly is it? Where is it? — a new study published in Science Advances sheds surprising light on how the brain switches us from conscious to unconscious states and vice versa. It has something to do with an imbalance between two neural systems. In fact, consciousness requires that imbalance.
