By Kate Douglas / Source: New Scientist
Earlier this year I found myself thinking about thinking. Specifically, what is it that makes the human mind so special? Like many people, I have always believed that the answer lies in our capacity for conscious thought. But listening to speakers at a recent Ernst Strungmann Forum in Frankfurt, Germany, I began to wonder if there might be more to it than that.
It was a discussion entitled "Better than conscious" that had me intrigued. The more I listened to what the assembled scientists had to say and talked to them about their work, the more it seemed that our higher consciousness alone is not what sets us apart from other animals.
In fact, far from playing second fiddle to the conscious mind, subconscious thought processes may play a crucial role in many of the mental facilities we prize as uniquely human, including creativity, memory, learning and language.
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