Intuition and the Brain

So the first lecture in this video is a lecture by a Calstate scientist named John Alman, about the brain and intuition from “Brain, Mind and Consciousness, the Skeptics Society Annual Conference”. Now if the words “anterior singlate” and “frontal insular cortex” don’t make you drool, you might have difficulty sitting through this 2:42 minute lecture - but here’s something I found interesting.

Intuition is a form of cognition in which many variables are rapidly evealuated in parallel and compresed into a single dimension. This compression facilitates fast decision-making. Typically we are not aware of the logical steps or assumptions underlying the process although intuition is based on experience-dependent probabilistic models. Instead we experince the intuitive process viscerally. Intuition operates largely in the social domain but can also be applied to purely physical situations. Intuition is plastic; it is not instinct, althought instinctive feelings may contribute to it. Emotional value judgments contribute to both intuition and deliberation.

Damage of the area of the brains associated with this intuition could be expressed as autism. People with autism may have to think in a very deliberate and linear way - very logical, because they have no access to this intuition. This makes dynamic, changing and paced social situations very difficult, because there is no spontaneous reaction to the things that are going on.

Here’s a quote from Temple Grandin, a high-level functioning autistic:

Each day I collect more data to place in my library of experience. When i encounter a new social situation, I have to search my memory for a similar experience that I can use as a model for my next action…. I have a very difficult time when I am confronted with unexpected social surprises. For common social interactions with clients I use preprogrammed, prerehearsed responses. Everything is done with logic.

Now this video isn’t about autism per say, but about the neurobiology that supports intuition.

Link to the video here