从感知到成长：探索心智的构建与转变

🎥 关于本视频：本视频是 Big Think 免费英语课程的中文翻译版，旨在帮助中文观众更好地理解内容，仅供学习使用，非商业用途。原视频版权归 Big Think 及相关作者所有。

🌐 原视频链接： Can you trust your own brain? A neuroscientist explains | Heather Berlin

📋 免责声明： 本翻译力求准确，但若有疏漏，请以原视频为准。

🌟 支持原创： 请访问 Big Think 官网获取更多精彩内容，并支持原作者的作品！

1 我们生活在独特的感知世界中

我们每个人都生活在自己的感知框架之中。在这个框架里，是一片黑暗的。实际上，它既看不见也听不见任何东西，只是在处理一系列的信号。你可以把每个人的大脑比作一个指纹：从物理角度来说，每个大脑都是独一无二的。它们之间存在细微的差异，而且会随着我们一生中的经历不断塑造。

我们的感知主要由两个因素构成：

• 一是来自内部的期望，这源于我们过去的经验；

• 二是来自外部进入大脑的信息。当这两者相遇时，就形成了感知，也就是我们实际体验到的世界。

但每个人的知觉都是独特的。

举例来说，我们永远无法真正体会到作为你是什么感觉，因为只有你自己才能了解你的第一人称主观体验。虽然我们之间可能存在相似之处，但正是这些差异创造了我们每个人感知世界的独特框架。

我一直对大脑和心智之间的关系着迷。我最大的困惑是想要理解我们意识感知的神经基础：从我们醒来的那一刻直到再次陷入无梦的深度睡眠，大脑究竟是如何创造出这些主观体验的？这包括我们的感受、思想和情感。

我们的心智是由过去的经验塑造而成的。当神经元开始形成连接时，随着你在人生中积累各种经历和体验，会发生一个修剪的过程：重要的连接会得到加强，而不重要的连接则会逐渐萎缩。通过这个过程，你的大脑就逐渐发展出一个更加明确的结构。

我们对周围世界的感知是心智构建的产物。从某种意义上说，它是一种幻象，因为这是由心智创造的，但外部世界中确实存在着真实的事物，只是我们无法真正看到全部。

以注意力为例，它就像一个聚光灯。你可以将这个聚光灯聚焦在视野中的任何位置，听觉也是同理。

就像在鸡尾酒会上，你能够专注于远处的某个对话，而完全不去听就在面前的谈话。

因此，即使某些事情就发生在你眼前，如果你的注意力聚光灯没有照射到那里，你的大脑可能仍在某种程度上处理着这些信息，但你并不会意识到它们。只有当这些信息变得重要时，你才会意识到它们的存在。

2 突破认知局限，拓展生命视野

我们的大脑在无意识处理信息的过程与行为之间存在着持续的相互影响。也就是说，你在任何时刻所意识到的事物都会影响你的感知方式和记忆内容。

当你处于消极的心理状态时，你会倾向于在环境中感知到更多消极的事物；相反，当你保持积极的心理状态时，你会更容易注意到周围积极的一面，尽管环境可能完全没有改变。

你可以主动选择关注内心的哪些方面：你可以选择关注积极的想法，让它们在你内心不断成长，而不是将注意力集中在消极的想法上。

因此，保持觉知实际上是你的大脑在主动控制你的关注点，同时也在控制着你对外界信息的接收方式以及对世界的反应方式。

总的来说，我们的大脑每天都在接收海量信息。如果必须有意识地处理所有这些信息，我们一定会不堪重负。因此，将事物分类会更容易一些。不仅如此，感知事物也不只停留在基础层面，它会上升到更高的认知层面，最终形成信念系统。为此，我们发展出了各种“图式”（schemas）。

但问题在于，即使某件事在一般情况下是正确的，也并不意味着它放之四海而皆准。

举个例子，过去有一种偏见认为女性是家庭主妇，而男性更多在职场工作。如果让人们看一张男人和女人的照片，问他们哪一个在办公室工作，人们很可能会因为先验期望而选择男人。

因此，这里需要一个平衡：一方面我们需要图式和期望来帮助我们感知世界，另一方面又要避免做出过度假设。

从这个角度来看，认知偏见在一定程度上是具有适应性的。如果你能持续不断地改变输入信息，随着时间推移，那些无意识的偏见就会逐渐改变。

比如我注意到，现在很多洗衣粉广告都会展示男人在家做家务的画面。我很喜欢这种改变，因为这正是在重新编程我们的大脑，以此来消除那些固有的偏见。

如果我们能找到方法来扩展我们所生活在其中的这个感知框架，我们就能更好地理解他人的视角。

当你越是理解并意识到自己是生活在某种特定的感知框架中时，就越可能激发你去培养或努力培养对他人的同理心，因为他们也同样生活在各自的感知框架之中。

在我们呼出最后一口气之前，我们都是未完成的作品。永远都有改变的空间，没有什么是一成不变的。

我遇到过七十多岁才第一次来做治疗的人，他们会说："我一生都在抑郁中度过，我不想在经历过快乐和幸福之前就离开人世。"

如果你改变了视角，它就会改变你体验世界的方式。

生活中确实充满痛苦，这是人生旅程不可避免的一部分。但是，我们每个人都能够学会将这些痛苦放在适当的背景中，并将其编织进我们的人生故事里。

所以要知道，我们的感知是一种幻觉，我们的自我意识是幻觉，这一切都是幻觉，因为这都是我们大脑构建的产物。我们的大脑为我们创造了这一切。

正因为如此，这反而成为了一个机会，因为我们可以在某种程度上控制我们的大脑如何感知世界，而真正的力量就蕴藏在这里。

**Conscious Perception - Heather Berlin**

**Introduction**  
So we're all living inside of our own perception box. It's dark in there. It doesn't actually see or hear anything. It's just a series of signals. And each brain, you can think of it like a thumbprint. Physically speaking, each brain is unique. It's slightly different and it's shaped throughout our lives based on our experiences. Our perceptions are basically formed from a combination of what we expect, so that's coming internally from our past experiences. And then what's coming into our brain externally. And when those two things meet, it creates this perception, which is what we actually experience. But everyone's perception is unique. And we can never know what it would feel like to be you, for example. Only you know your own first-person subjective experience. I can never know it. And although we might have similarities, there's also these differences that create our own box that we perceive the world through.

**The Science of the Perception Box**  
I've always been fascinated about the relationship between the physical brain and the mind. My big question was trying to understand the neural basis of our conscious perception. So everything we experience from the moment we wake up, so when we go back into a deep dreamless sleep, how does the brain create these subjective experiences that we have, our feelings, our thoughts, emotions.

**The Shaping of Minds and the Pruning Process**  
Our minds are shaped by our prior experience. So as these neurons start forming connections, and as you go through life and have experiences, it's a pruning process. So it's actually strengthening the important connections and allowing the other unimportant connections to kind of wither away. And then you start to develop a more defined structure.

**Perception as a Construct of the Mind**  
Our perception of the world around us is a construct of the mind. It's an illusion in the sense that it's created by the mind, but there are things that actually exist out there in the world, but we're just not actually seeing all of it. So if you think of attention, it's like a spotlight. And so you can focus that spotlight anywhere in the visual field, let's say, or even auditorially, right? You could think of a cocktail party. You can tune in to some conversation over there and not be listening to what's right in front of you. So things could be happening right in front of your face, but if you're a spotlight of attention is not there, your brain might be processing it in some way, but you're not consciously aware of it. You become aware of it when it becomes important.

**The Interplay Between Conscious and Unconscious Processes**  
There's this constant interplay between things that our brain processes unconsciously that informs our behavior. So what you're conscious of at any moment can affect what you perceive and what you remember as well. So if you're in a negative head space, you're going to start perceiving more negative things in your environment. If you're in a positive head space, you're going to perceive more positive things, even though the environment may be exactly the same. You can choose where you attend to internally. You can choose to attend to positive thoughts and have them grow within you rather than focusing your attention on negative thoughts. So being mindful is your brain controlling what you're attending to and also controlling what you're taking in and how you're reacting to the world.

**Schemas and Cognitive Biases**  
In general, there's so much information coming at our brains throughout the day. If we had to consciously process all of it, it would be overwhelming. It's easier to sort of categorize things. It's easier to perceive things not just at a basic level, but it scales up to these higher cognitive levels, to belief systems. And so we develop these schemas. But the problem is that even though on average something might be true, it doesn't mean that it's true for every case. Let's say a bias is that women were homemakers and the men were more in the workplace. If they saw a picture of a man and a woman, and you'd say, okay, which one is working in the office, people would more likely say the man because prior expectations. So there's this balance between having a schema that helps us perceive things in the world, or expectations, and then also not making these over assumptions. And so cognitive biases can be adaptive up to a certain point. So if you change the inputs enough, over time, you change those unconscious biases. I noticed a lot of like commercials for laundry detergent and stuff, it's like the man at home doing the housework, you know, which I love because that is reprogramming the brain to kind of counteract those biases.

**Expanding Our Perceptual Boxes and the Power of Perspective**  
If we can figure out ways to either expand this box that we're living within, we're better able to connect with other perspectives. The more you can understand and also knowing that you live within a certain kind of perceptual box can create potentially the impetus for you to develop or try to work on developing more empathy for others who are living inside their own perception boxes. We're all a work in progress until our very last breath. And there's always room for change. Nothing is set in stone. I've had people come to therapy in their seventies for the first time because they say, you know, I've been depressed my whole life and I don't want to die without having experienced joy and happiness. If you change your perspective, it changes how you experience the world. And life is full of pain. That's part of the journey. But being able to contextualize that and weave it into your life narrative is something we can all do. So knowing that our perception is an illusion, our sense of self is illusion, all of it is illusion in the sense that it's a construct of our brain. Our brain is creating this for us. And given that, that's an opportunity because we can have some control over how our brain perceives the world and that's where the power lies.