The School Bus- Brain analogy
Your Brain is a School Bus. You have the physical bus, the driver, and all the students. The motor, the brakes, and the gas line make up the structure of the bus akin to the fatty acids, neurons and neurotransmitters that make up the brain. The students with their shouts echoing around the bus are all of your thoughts; your wants, needs, fears and desires. The longer you are on the route of life, with every stop that is made, more kids get picked up to add to all the noise.
At this point, most readers will believe he or she (the feeling they call "I" or "Me") is the bus driver. Neuroscience does not see it this way. The bus driver makes sure to stop at all the lights, use the turn signals and in general keep the bus moving, just as your autonomic nervous system ensures that you keep your balance, your lungs continue to fill with air and your heart continues to beat.
Consciousness (the agency you think of as "I") is more like a respectful senior class president sitting at the front of the bus who knows the route better than the bus driver. If they work together in harmony, the bus will get to school in a more efficient manner. Remember though, the wise respectful student must compete with all the other students yelling and screaming for the bus driver's attention. One may be complaining that he is hungry. Another may be saying she is tired. The driver may get distracted by a group of students shrieking to watch out for a car that isn't there (i.e. needless worries) or by another student claiming that the senior doesn't actually know the correct route (self-doubt).
As mentioned above, if done effectively, it can seem as if the senior is the one in control of the bus, is he/she really, or is it just an illusion? The student could try his hardest to convince, manipulate or coerce the driver into taking the kids to the mall instead but no matter how hard he tries, the bus will always arrive at the school eventually. The same is true in life. People like to believe they are the driving force on their journey through life, when in reality they are merely a passenger along to observe. Support for this deterministic view of free will, however unpopular, is becoming more and more evident everyday with the exponential explosion of technology in neuroscience.
*Consciousness may have no more control than a back seat driver, however that doesn't have to make the ride any less enjoyable.
Text by: Richard Best
Email: rmbest@ncsu.edu
