Sensory Processing and our Psychological Identity

Sensory Processing collects the world around us to give us our place and helps us plan our response to this gathered information. We take having a psychological identity for granted.  The Mind appears to be unified. When we are awake, we think we know who we are. This is a mystery that continues to baffle brilliant neurologists. Mindfulness training helps us question who we think we are. What would we do without mirrors, language and our sensory perceptions?  Would you be you without your surroundings, and other human beings?

Sensory Processing and My Identity Please

Humans need something reflective to hold in their hands so that they can feel real, that they exist, that they matter, that they are uniquely qualified to be alive and relevant.  Imagine yourself alone on a flat empty infinite surface.  Who would you be?

If we have a relationship with an object or another person, we form an identity.  It could be a painting, a child, an architectural accomplishment, a garden, a meal, a God, a job, a car, an act of kindness, or an act of heroic war effort.  Without something to reflect back who we think we are, we fall into the trap of no purpose, no value, no identity, no sense of self in relationship to each other.   The nothingness that exists when we are on an island, or estranged from our society is captured by Tom Hanks in Cast Away.  We simply have to invent our meaning.  It is very difficult to accept our meaninglessness, our emptiness and our profound and beautiful mind, without some attachment and reflective relationship.

Our Secret Friend

Turns out we are not really alone, even when we think we are alone. We have a built in secret friend.  Our two brain hemispheres are two completely different personalities.  They collaborate in such a way that we seem seamlessly one person, but in fact we have a backup version of our experience that tends to balance out and create an army of two when we go the grocery store, go to work or write a book.  We never give our secret friend any credit, because we tend to think that despite the fact that we need each other, we also sell each other short when it comes to credits.

The left hemisphere tends to be dominant, checking in with the right hemisphere every second or two.  It is pretty much the leader of the two selves.  About 10% of people are right hemisphere dominant.  They don’t talk much.  They perceive reality in a much more realistic manner.  Unless they have the language nucleus located on the right side however, they are only allowed to pass notes onto the more vocal left hemisphere.  This is reflective in the findings of the Sperry experiments;

With individuals who have undergone a severance of the corpus callosum, the connecting fibers that let the two hemispheres communicate they found different experiences and different types of perception of the two sides of the brain with vision, language and motor skill.  If the left hemisphere received a flashed word, the patient would verbally report that word.  If it was flashed to the right hemisphere the patient might be able to locate it by picking out the object among a few choices with the connected left hand.  When they were asked why they were holding this item, the verbal left hemisphere would have no idea, often making up some excuse unrelated to the task. Also the left hand (connected to the right hemisphere) may draw what the right hemisphere is shown, but when the left hemisphere is asked what the left hand drew, that verbal response would have no clue.  In Sperry’s words;

“indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and . . . both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel” — Roger Wolcott Sperry, 1974

Here is a cool video

When we accept the mechanics of our mind and question our perceptions, our addictions and our habits then we can better identify who we are, but it may initially leave us feeling stranded.  Taking a look at how and what we think and putting that on an observer level takes courage, but finding yourself takes every moment and can honestly be very entertaining.