Conscious, Thought and the Brain

Conscious thought is a brain process. It is a mechanism that involves close communication between the brain and other parts of the body such as the neural network. Consciousness results from the representation of patterns in the brain which bind some neural groups into a kind of performance that is coordinated. Thought itself is an instance of the brain process which means that before a thought is elicited, the brain has to be coordinating the process (Saladin, Gan, & Cushman, 2018). It also must have crucial mechanisms that maintain consciousness lest thought would not be elicited when one is unconscious. 

Examples of thoughts that are showed when one is conscious are verbal activities and display of emotions. The two processes are qualitative experiences of brain activity whenever one is conscious. If it were not for the case of consciousness, one would not be able to have a coordinated verbal activity because their brain would not be able to coordinate the thought of speaking in the very first place (Tsuchiya et al., 2015). Therefore, the brain must first be active before a thought is elicited. It is the brain that for instance coordinates what one is about to say and how they verbally state it. Were it not for the brain; speaking would not take place at all. 

Descriptively, consciousness is the basic ability of the brain to acquire information. It is the state of being awake and using the physical senses to acquire information. To be conscious first, one has to be awake. It, therefore, means that while one is conscious, two basic activities take place. One is that the brain is able to acquire information and direct it to the memory (Saladin, Gan, & Cushman, 2018). The other activity that takes place is that the information is not just stored in the memory but is also retrieved when needed. Consciousness is, therefore, a brain process. 

The processing of information in the mind which can be called the process of thinking, therefore, happens when one is conscious, and the brain has to be working. A thought is a piece of information that is processed in the brain. Since whenever the brain is conscious whenever it is working, it cannot be denied that a thought is simply a conscious process of the brain (Tsuchiya et al., 2015). In the whole process, therefore, the brain could be said to be the central controller. It is the determinant of whether one is conscious or not and still the determinant of whether a thought could be elicited or not. 

References

Saladin, K. S., Gan, C.A., & Cushman, H.N. (2018). Anatomy & Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function (8^th ed.). New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Education. 

Tsuchiya, N., Wilke, M., Frässle, S., & Lamme, V. A. (2015). No-report paradigms: extracting the true neural correlates of consciousness. Trends in cognitive sciences, 19(12), 757-770.