If someone were to (theoretically) throw a wrench at your head, you might be able to catch it just in time to avoid a concussion. But how? Typically, for split-second reactions, we do not consciously decide to catch. Your brain reacts, does the catching thing, and you don't have to think about it at all.
In fact, our brains regularly make decisions before we even know it. In one 2008 experiment, that has since been repeated a few times, participants were given decision-making tasks while their brains were monitored using brain imaging techniques. It was found that one's brain can make a decision up to 10 seconds before its owner is consciously aware of it.
There's a lot going on in the mind that scientists are still trying to understand. Indeed, despite numerous attempts by neuroscientists over the last century and beyond, it has been difficult to pinpoint exactly why consciousness exists or what it is — a quandary known as the "hard problem of consciousness." Even though we have a good understanding of where consciousness originates — essentially via neurons sending signals to each other — scientists still aren't sure how it arises in matter. After all, humans are just made of basic chemicals like the rest of the universe. A rock isn't conscious—is it? So what makes our soup of chemicals called a brain different? That's the hard problem to solve.
For decades, some outsider researchers have postulated that the brain has some connection to quantum entanglement that results in consciousness. And a recent experiment published in the Journal of Physics Communications is an indicator that this could be possible.
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