What Happens to Your Body When Your Brain Is Thinking?

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsWhat Is a Thought?Anatomy of a ThoughtThoughts and EmotionsRegulating Your ThoughtsChanging Your ThoughtsImpact of Brain Damage and Disease

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

What Is a Thought?

Anatomy of a Thought

Thoughts and Emotions

Regulating Your Thoughts

Changing Your Thoughts

Impact of Brain Damage and Disease

Close

What happens to your body when you’re thinking? You might think that is a simple question to answer: a thought is just words in your brain that cause you to do something, right? In reality, this question has plagued scientists for decades and the precise answer is still something that is the subject of research.

For this reason, it’s not something that can be clearly described in a flowchart format. However, what we can do is break down what we do know about our thoughts and then try to put the pieces of the puzzle together to create a picture of what is happening.

The Connection Between Mental Health and Physical Health

The first problem with describing what happens in your body when you are thinking is that not everyone agrees on what constitutes a thought. At first glance, you probably think of a thought as something that you tell yourself.

For example, this morning while lying in bed you might have had the thought, “I don’t want to get up.”

Let’s take a moment and deconstruct that thought to try and figure out exactly what it is.

Phew, that’s a lot to think about. And, depending on who you ask, you will get different answers.

Reductionism vs. Dualism

All that aside, if we want to consider what happens in our bodies (or specifically our brains) when we are thinking, then we need to at least acknowledge that our thoughts can influence our bodies.

We know this to be true for a number of reasons. For example:

Since we know that thoughts can influence our brains and our bodies, let’s take a look at exactly how they do that and what is happening under the hood (in your head).

Let’s jump back to that morning thought: “I don’t want to get out of bed.”

Scientists would argue first that the thought you had was not spontaneous and random. Instead, your thought was likely a reaction to something around you.

Now, once you have that thought, what happens?

Some Neuroscience Terms Defined

In order to understand how thinking happens in the brain, there are some key terms you know more about:

How the Brain Thinks

The brain operates in a complex way with many parts intersecting and interacting with each other simultaneously. So, when you have that thought in the morning, it’s likely that all these differentcomponents of your brain(prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, neurons, neurotransmitters, etc.) are all involved at the same time.

If the result of your thought that you don’t want toget out of bedis that you throw the covers back over your head, what happened to allow that action? Or, if instead you decided that you needed to get up and got out of bed, what happened differently?

We know that when the brain is making a decision, different neural networks compete with each other. Eventually, one of the networks becomes activated and produces the desired behavior.

This happens through nerve cells in the spinal cord called motorneurons that fire and sends an impulse down their axon, which travels to the muscle and causes the action: in this case you throwing the covers over your head or actually getting out of bed.

What about the emotional effects of your thought?

We know that your thoughts can influence the neurotransmitters in your brain. Optimism is linked to better immunity to illness while depressive thinking may be linked to reduced immunity.

So, if you throw the covers over your head, and that triggers other thoughts such as “I’m tired,” “I can’t get up,” or “Life is hard,” complex interactions in your brain may send signals to other parts of your body.

On the other hand, if you get out of bed and think, “This isn’t so bad,” “I’m getting going now,” or “Today is going to be a great day,” the pathways and signals that your neurons send will obviously be different.

We don’t yet know all the intricacies of these processes; however, suffice it to say that your thoughts matter.

Your brain is constantly receiving signals, whether from the outside environment in terms of perceptions or memories from your past. It then activates different patterns through waves in the brain through billions of synapses.

It goes without saying that your thoughts are linked to your emotions in a bidirectional way. How many times have you experienced a shot of adrenaline after having a fearful thought? Have you ever gone to a job interview or on a first date and felt the same?

Whenever you have a thought, there is a corresponding chemical reaction in your mind and body as a result.

Changing Your Thoughts Changes How You Feel

If that sounds a little unusual, go back to the premise that thoughts are physical entities in your brain (and not spontaneous outside forces that don’t connect with your body).

If you accept the scientific view that your thoughts are physical parts of your brain and that changing your thoughts can have an effect on your body, then you’ve just developed a powerful weapon.

Changing Thoughts Starts With Identifying Triggers

But wait a minute: if our thoughts are always just reactions to something, how can we take control and change them?

Of course, your thoughts don’t arise out of a vacuum. For example, you are reading this article and gaining new ideas from it that you can potentially put to use in changing your thoughts.

What this means is that if you want to start changing your thoughts, you need to be aware of the triggers of your thoughts and also the patterns of thoughts that you have in response to those triggers.

The next time you are lying in bed thinking, “I don’t want to get up,” ask yourself what triggered that thought.

The Power of Positive Thinking

How to Change Your Thoughts and Change Your Body

Get very clear about the triggers of yourthoughtsand you will have the power to change your emotions and your health. In the case of the person not wanting to get out of bed, it could be that the alarm clock triggered the thought.

You’ve got a mental association between the alarm clock and the thought “I don’t want to get out of bed.”

You’ve worn a mental groove in your brain, so to speak, that instantly connects that trigger with that thought. So if you want to change that reaction, you either need to change the trigger or break the association with that thought.

Challenge Yourself to Think Differently

One way to do this would be to force yourself to think a different thought each morning for 30 days until that becomes the new reaction to the trigger. For example, you could force yourself to think, “I love getting up” every day for 30 days.

If that thought is just a little too unrealistic, maybe try something like, “It’s not so bad getting up. Once I get going I’m glad I got up early.”

Changing environmental triggers can also be helpful. For example, you could also change the sound of your alarm so that you’re less likely to have that old reaction (the old thought) to the old alarm.

Once you get the hang of this, you can apply it in all areas of your life! For example:

Cognitive functions depend on all parts of the brain working properly; when these systems become disrupted, thinking can be affected.

In addition to affecting aspects of thinking and behavior, brain injuries can also have lasting physical effects including headaches, dizziness, hearing loss, vision loss, sleep problems, and fatigue. All of these issues can then affect how a person thinks.

A Word From Verywell

While it’s true that there is a lot we still don’t understand about the mind, body, universe, etc., it’s fairly obvious that at the very least, thoughts can have a direct influence on reactions in the brain and body.

This is the basis of many forms oftalk therapy, such ascognitive-behavioral therapy. This can allow you to change your thinking, you are also doing something that can have a positive impact on your brain and your body. As you build new neural pathways and develop healthier thinking habits, these changes can be long-lasting.

What Is Cognitive Psychology?

SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Breazeale R.Thoughts, Neurotransmitters, Body-Mind Connection.Cornell Center for Materials Research.How does your body move? Does the brain send it messages?Dougherty E.What Are Thoughts Made Of?Shapiro E, Shapiro D.How Your Mind Affects Your Body.Worrall S.Why the Brain-Body Connection Is More Important Than We Think.

Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Breazeale R.Thoughts, Neurotransmitters, Body-Mind Connection.Cornell Center for Materials Research.How does your body move? Does the brain send it messages?Dougherty E.What Are Thoughts Made Of?Shapiro E, Shapiro D.How Your Mind Affects Your Body.Worrall S.Why the Brain-Body Connection Is More Important Than We Think.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Breazeale R.Thoughts, Neurotransmitters, Body-Mind Connection.Cornell Center for Materials Research.How does your body move? Does the brain send it messages?Dougherty E.What Are Thoughts Made Of?Shapiro E, Shapiro D.How Your Mind Affects Your Body.Worrall S.Why the Brain-Body Connection Is More Important Than We Think.

Breazeale R.Thoughts, Neurotransmitters, Body-Mind Connection.

Cornell Center for Materials Research.How does your body move? Does the brain send it messages?

Dougherty E.What Are Thoughts Made Of?

Shapiro E, Shapiro D.How Your Mind Affects Your Body.

Worrall S.Why the Brain-Body Connection Is More Important Than We Think.

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