How I Became Aware Of My Own Brain

Part of Brain Awareness Week, 2009

I‘m not exactly sure when I first noticed my brain, but I didn’t take it too seriously until I was about 21 years old. Oh, sure, I KNEW I had one before then… but I didn’t really spend much time pondering the ins and outs of my personal neural networks.

Mind you, I’d always been fascinated by the human mind. I was all about analyzing personalities, consciousness and cognitive processes. But I thought about them in a vague, abstract and amorphous way… as if what I called the mind was some sort of ethereal hermit crab that took up residence in people’s skulls.

If I ran into a little mental glitch, I thought it was a matter of not “wrong-thinking” and that if I could just figure out the “right-thinking” approach, it would correct itself. This is how we used to approach mental issues in the old days, kids… if there was a problem, it was a matter of “wrong-thinking” -as if our hermit crab of a mind just needed some obedience training.

Then I got sick.

Not just a little sick, but blackouts-convulsions-vomiting-sleeping-all-the-time-extreme-anxiety-and-personality-changes sick.

It turned out that I’d developed a wacky sensitivity to sugar. Any sweets (and most carbohydrates) were setting off extreme insulin reactions, causing my blood sugar to roller coaster up and down, flooding my body with a biochemical cocktail of adrenaline, cortisol, and a bunch of other things the names of which I’ve forgotten.

Being pretty self aware and in touch with my hermit-crab-of-a-mind, it was both fascinating and frustrating. I *knew* my thought processes were changing along with my blood sugar. I could feel the changes in blood circulation changing inside my head, and it often felt as though my brain itself were swelling and receding, creating bizarre shifting pressures inside my skull.

As my blood sugar rose, my focus would scatter, and anxieties would build… when levels dropped again, my ability to think clearly would just stop. I couldn’t problem solve, I couldn’t make decisions. My memory sucked, my reaction times were horrific. It wasn’t a matter of thinking about thing in the “right way” or practicing skills…. my *brain* wasn’t responding right. I was suddenly, hugely aware of the difference between that thing I knew of as “me”, the part that was observing, and the physical circuitry in the brain. I was also suddenly aware that that observant part of “me” wasn’t nearly as disconnected from my neural networks as I’d imagined. This wasn’t at all like a hermit crab living in a borrowed shell - my mind, my sense of self, so much of what I identified as “me” was clearly tied to brain and body.

Maybe it wasn’t as insightful or dramatic as Jill Bolte Taylor witnessing her own stroke, but it was pretty astounding experience, anyway. Interestingly, somewhat also like Jill Bolte Taylor, none of this convinced me that the “spiritual” aspects of identity weren’t real. Becoming aware of my own brain definitely changed how I thought about the concepts of spirit and soul; clearly, the brain shapes my identity as much or more than any other part of the experience of this world - but that “shaping” effect doesn’t make “me” any less real or less persistent than other changing circumstances of life’s environment. As far as I’m concerned, the spiritual questions of identity and persistence are still an open question.

Anyway, there you have it…

…the story of how I became aware of my own brain. I somehow resisted titling this post “Your Mind. It Ain’t A Hermit Crab”. I think I’ll tuck that one away for later, though.

And if this article interested you, you might also want to check out this equally self-indulgent post from the archives: I Was A Teenage Neuro-Plasticity Junkie