The Subconscious Brain

              Benedict Carey, a journalist for the New York Times, wrote an article in 2007 titled Who’s Minding the Mind? He’s worked at The Times since 2004, and from 2007-2010, Carey was the mind columnist for Science Times.  Prior to this he’d worked at The Los Angeles Times writing about health, medicine and brain science.

                In Who’s Minding the Mind? Carey discusses various psychological studies carried out having to do with the behavioral nature of the subconscious. He explains, through studies by professors at Yale, Stanford, Florida State and more, that the brain acts based on cues it receives from the subconscious. Sometimes those cues line up with what the conscious brain thinks it should be doing and sometimes they do not. These studies attempt to explain why a person can begin doing one task and, halfway through, quit and begin doing something totally different without fully understanding why.

                Carey writes to the audience of readers at the New York Times and other individuals interested in medicine, science, and psychology. He is an effective writer to this audience because he explains complicated scientific terms and reasoning in a way that any reader could understand. For example, he briefly discusses the role the prefrontal cortex plays in memory and deliberate vs. subconscious actions. By first explaining that the prefrontal cortex was one of the first evolved traits in early humans, he provides added detail and context that allows readers to understand how this particular piece of the brain became so complicated and important in the role it plays.

                A rhetorical device used often in this article is the inclusion of multiple ‘asides’. Through these asides, Carey is able to explain various studies. For example, he explains an interesting study in which students were asked to sit in a room and eat a biscuit. When the faint smell of cleaning product was present, the students cleaned up their biscuit crumbs three times more than when it was not. These asides provide many examples that help to flesh out his overall purpose; however, they are not wholly beneficial. In my opinion, Carey didn’t always explain these studies enough and it made the article a tad difficult to follow at times.

 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0