Have you ever sat down to watch just one episode of a television series, only to realise two hours later that you have watched four? Or opened Amazon to purchase one item and found yourself browsing and buying things you never intended to?
At some point, you wake up to what has happened and wonder: Why did I do that? I never intended to.
Who, then, was in control?
We tend to believe that we consciously direct our thoughts, decisions and actions. We experience ourselves as the decision-makers, the ones who choose what to do and when to do it. Yet neuroscience presents a rather humbling picture: a substantial part of what happens within us takes place without our conscious awareness.
The brain works behind the scenes
The PBS NOVA documentary Your Brain: Who's in Control? takes us into the fascinating world of unconscious brain processes.
Our brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons, working through extraordinarily complex networks. Most of this activity never enters our conscious awareness.
Think about something as ordinary as walking. We rarely think about the intricate coordination required to maintain balance, adjust our posture, coordinate our muscles and respond to the changing environment. Yet our brain manages all of this continuously.
The same applies to numerous bodily functions: regulating heart rate, maintaining body temperature and coordinating digestion. We do not consciously issue instructions for each of these processes. They happen automatically.
But the documentary takes this observation further through a particularly intriguing phenomenon: sleepwalking.
When the brain is awake and asleep at the same time
Sleepwalking offers a remarkable window into the relationship between conscious awareness and behaviour.
A sleepwalker may get out of bed, walk around, navigate obstacles and sometimes even perform relatively complex activities, despite not being fully conscious.
How is this possible?
The documentary explains that during sleepwalking, different regions of the brain can be in different states. Some regions remain in deep sleep, while others become active. The prefrontal cortex, associated with deliberate decision-making and aspects of self-awareness, may remain relatively inactive even as brain regions involved in movement and coordination operate.
In other words, complex behaviour can occur without the kind of conscious direction we normally associate with it.
This challenges a deeply held assumption: that conscious awareness is always necessary for purposeful-looking behaviour.
The hidden influence of habits
This is not limited to sleepwalking or bodily functions. Much of our everyday behaviour is also shaped by habits and automatic responses.
Consider reaching for your phone whenever you have a spare moment, checking messages without consciously deciding to do so, or automatically reacting with irritation when someone says something unpleasant.
These behaviours are not necessarily the outcome of a fresh, deliberate decision each time. Repeated actions, familiar situations and learned associations can gradually make behaviour more automatic.
Research by psychologists Wendy Wood and Dennis Rünger, published in the Annual Review of Psychology (2016), explains how habits develop through repetition in recurring contexts. Habits can become our default responses, sometimes operating even when they no longer serve our conscious intentions.
Yet this does not mean that we are helpless passengers in our own brains. Conscious thought remains important. Research by Roy Baumeister and colleagues also demonstrates that conscious thinking can influence behaviour, although it often works in partnership with unconscious processes rather than independently of them.
An ancient question revisited
Interestingly, this question has a philosophical dimension that Indian wisdom traditions have explored for centuries.
The Bhagavad Gita, in Chapter 3, Verse 5, says:
न हि कश्चित्क्षणमपि जातु तिष्ठत्यकर्मकृत्।
कार्यते ह्यवशः कर्म सर्वः प्रकृतिजैर्गुणैः॥No one can remain without action even for a moment. Everyone is compelled to act by the qualities born of Prakriti (nature).
The verse invites us to examine how much of our behaviour is driven by our inherent tendencies, conditioning and the forces of nature, rather than by deliberate choice.
The connection with neuroscience is not that the Gita was describing modern brain mechanisms. Rather, both invite us to question our assumption that every thought and action originates from conscious, deliberate control.
Perhaps the first step towards governing ourselves is recognising how much of our behaviour operates without our awareness.
Awareness must precede self-governance. We cannot consciously work with patterns we do not recognise.
A question to carry forward
If so much of our behaviour happens without conscious awareness, what does this tell us about the very person we believe ourselves to be?
Are we truly one unified self, directing everything from within?
Or is the sense of being a single, independent decision-maker more complicated than we imagine?
In Part 2: Are We Really One Unified Self?
References and further reading
- Primary inspiration: NOVA/PBS, Your Brain: Who's in Control? (2023), presented by neuroscientist Heather Berlin. Watch the documentary.
- Wood, W. & Rünger, D. (2016). Psychology of Habit. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 289–314. Research paper.
- Baumeister, R. F. et al. (2011). Do Conscious Thoughts Cause Behavior? Annual Review of Psychology. Research paper.
- Bhagavad Gita, 3.5.