The number does not just refer to your conscious thoughts. Just typing that last sentence was a long series of thoughts, including tapping the keys and spelling the words - during which I also noted a squeaking noise, decided I liked a song that was playing, and glanced at the clock. And there is a whole lot more thinking going on beneath the surface. As it turns out, 70,000 is a very conservative number compared to the 600,000+ possible thoughts a person can have each day, which works out to 10 thoughts every second.

Read the scientific formula at the site below (click the "every-thought" link on the homepage)

http://www.aesthetic-machin...

I think your probably right, cause i mean weather we are aware of it or not our mind is constantly making decisions for us. Everything from breathing in and out to moving your eyes across your computer screen to read this comment are all "thoughts" that your mind controls without you having to make any sort of conscious effort what so ever. So i guess if you factored in the thoughts that your mind has that you arent aware of along with the ones that you are it MIGHT come out to being about that number maybe more. But really, who knows? All anyone can do is make some sort of estimate, that's why they say between 60k and 80k. 70k is just a good "average". PLUS you have to think, what do they mean by "Thoughts" does mean things you actively think about? or EVERYTHING your mind does with or without your active involvement? The term "Thought" isn't very well defined in ANY of these so called "estimates" I mean are we talking about the act if thinking in the non-physical sense, or are they talking more about the physical electrical impulses that fire through your brain that create thoughts and actions? Theres so many things that one would have to make clear before making a claim like this. But honestly, i really dont see why 70k "thoughts" a day is out of the question if your using the term in general and are including all forms of thoughts, both conscious and subconscious.

Thanks, Rick C.
The info your provide was invaluable!

I would like to know how many 'verbalised' thoughts I have each day. What I suppose is commonly understood as 'thinking'.

Well, I don&#039t know about that, but Jupiter does kind of look like a giant eye. That Great Spot is the pupil.

Ryan: Yeah, it reminds me of the 10% of brain myth as well. The same kind of people seem to buy into it...

Red: No, thought is very poorly defined. Personally I have no idea where one thought ends and another begins. I have had days (mainly when depressed) where I really only had "one thought in my mind". Of course that wasn&#039t literally the only thing I was aware of - I could still see & hear & "think" in a short-term sense - but still, are those "thoughts"? I&#039m not sure.

I agree with red: what is one thought? When does a thought start and begin? (were these two questions one thought or two? Because they were kind of related). I think thoughts come in flows rather than as single units, so it&#039s impossible to count them...

Yeah, if a person person thinks about going camping and they think about shoes, socks, pants and a backpack, do we count those individual items as thoughts?

The backpack alone, for me would generate at least 10 to 40 other images of which related to that backpack. So I would consider each image, each distinction, each thing that changed every moment that it changed would be a new thought.

Ayurveda home remedies revolve around an ancient system of medicine that has its roots in India. Ayurveda has been used by millions of people for thousands of years in not only India but throughout South Asia. Ayurveda is currently being used in quite a few western countries.

Here you can find a lot of useful ayurvedic remedies.

I´m journalist and I am always looking for the source of everything I write in my blog. I cannot just reproduce a myth :( I´ll keep searching. Thanks for your article guys, Ana.

Kahneman is *not* the source for the 3 second psychological present. Perhaps he popularized the concept, but there are many others who pioneered it. Time researchers, e.g. Ernst Poeppel.

The only reason this matters is that people tend to cite popularizers of science (Gladwell or Lehrer) vs. the actual "creators" of that science. Understandable, but please don&#039t do that.

Ryan: Yep, my thoughts exactly.

Francesco Sizi attempted to refute Gailileo by declaring:

There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two eyes and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone, undecided and indifferent. From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets is necessarily seven … Besides, the Jews and other ancient nations, as well as modern Europeans, have adopted the division of the week into seven days, and have named them from the seven planets; now if we increase the number of planets, this whole system falls to the ground … Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless and therefore do not exist. (Holton & Roller, 1958, p. 160)

Ivana Fulli MD said...

errata: a gremlin in my keyboard made me write twice seels instead of sells.

I intended to ask you :

Neuroskeptic, Do you not think that the problem is not who is ti buy into it but who sells it?

I also looking for research of *0 000 thinks per day, but didn't find.

I just noticed the link I posted previously no longer contains the footnote I mentioned. It can be seen here: http://web.archive.org/web/.... The "trivia" quotes the 70,000 claim with an asterisk, and the footnote says: "This is still an open question (how many thoughts does the average human brain processes in 1 day). LONI faculty have done some very preliminary studies using undergraduate student volunteers and have estimated that one may expect around 60-70K thoughts per day. These results are not peer-reviewed/published. There is no generally accepted definition of what "thought" is or how it is created. In our study, we had assumed that a "thought" is a sporadic single-idea cognitive concept resulting from the act of thinking, or produced by spontaneous systems-level cognitive brain activations."

I just checked the "everything" link given below (aesthetic-machinery) and it can't be used. It defines thought as a condition of neurons. There are such conditions for many things besides thoughts, and we are still not close to being able to connect specific neural with specific behaviors (including cognitive behaviors, such as ideas or thoughts). So 70k has no basis in scientific research, apparently.

I have studied "ideas" from a cognitive science point of view for 30 years and the 70k is questionable, esp since there are uncertain sources. Admittedly, the definition of "thought" is ambiguous. "Idea" is much better defined, and there is a technology to measure them. They are used in many tests of creative potential, for example. That is because what people create usually starts with an idea--a meaningful thought. Admittedly, the size of an idea, and its representation, varies from person to person (and domain to domain, e.g., math vs music). The other relevant tidbit is that many thoughts are just information drawn from memory. Most adults are lazy and rely on past experience (including assumption, habit, routine) as often as possible. I would exclude memories from thoughts, the latter being actively constructed (though typically tied to experience). Extrapolating from the research on ideation, 70k seems much, much too too high.

Have you ever noticed how many *layers* of concurrent thoughts that you have? Have you ever tapped into the middle of a tune that you had been humming in your head all along but just now became aware of? Have you every been actively doing, focusing on or planning one activity, while thinking about the details of a different activity that is also "on you mind".

Those are examples of two layers of thought -- all conscious thoughts, but with various degrees of focus.

In reality, we have many layers of simultaneous thoughts. The ones that are on the fringe of awareness, we sometimes perceive as "a nagging feeling". The ones even farther from the foreground, we call sub-conscious. But that is only a matter of degree.

Additionally, not all thoughts are encoded into a linear sequence of words. Some are perceived in their entirety without the linearization. This is one difference between right and left hemisphere processing. But we are still "thinking" about things, even if they are non-verbal thoughts about how the artwork that we are painting is shaping up (while simultaneously picturing the effects that various changes, colors, and brushstokes will affect the impact and feeling of the painting).

The bottom line is that we think not only linearly, but also in parallel, which easily increases the popular number-of-thoughts estimates, perhaps by orders of magnitude.

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I found this:

http://loni.usc.edu/about_l...

Be sure to read the footnote

it's inarguable that conscious thoughts are physical actions. were it otherwise, we could have [random number] 2,000,000 thoughts at the exact same time, which we cannot; we can only have one, then the other, no matter how closely attached they may be, even by nanoseconds (1 billionth of a second or a billion conscious thoughts per second). if you had no sleep, over 24 hours and a conscious thought per nanosecond, then you would have 8.64e+13 thoughts per day. that's one end of the spectrum, on the other end, 1 single conscious thought per day (we'll call that the "budda"), so between the budda and 8.64e+13 is the total number of possible conscious thoughts per day. pick any number, 40k on average sounds reasonable to me, and that's essentially the end of the discussion, since all of our brains operate differently. comments welcome.

Only one thought at a time? . . . Try singing in public. While I am singing (thinking the lyrics), I am gazing out at the audience, checking who is looking at me, what people are wearing, thinking about what they are thinking about, wondering are my friends here yet? et cetera, et cetera.

Sadly, all these possibilities within all these mental spheres, structures and concepts, yet what comes out of their mouths and ends up in 3D and 2D is mostly dirt and garbage . . .

You have to remember that not only are we consciously having thoughts about everything external, in the now, but we are constantly thinking in the background, subconsciously.

We are consciously having a thought about external forms only when we are forming an opinion or explaining the external form. Otherwise you can interact with an external event without any thought. Just observe without thinking.

Great discussion about thoughts. Do we count thoughts that are subconscious or just our own concsious thinking? "more milk in coffee?" "I look professional. "

Haha and where did they get this idea that we think the same thoughts everyday?

Richard Gipps: Good point.

On what it is to have a thought anyway: Imagine that you walk into the church and your friend says &#039Where do you think the priest is?&#039 and you say &#039In the sacristry&#039. This of course is not a cogitation of yours that had gone through your mind as a piece of internal speech. Nevertheless it was the right answer to a request to be informed about what one thinks. When we think of thoughts in this (more dispositional) sense the idea that there is some specific number that we have each day becomes absurd. Even when we consider those thoughts that are occurrent cogitations we would need to stipulate a, rather than rely on some alleged pre-existing, meaning which would enable us to distinguish or assimilate the cogitation that the priest is in the sacristry and the cogitation that the priest is in the sacristry putting his robes on.

Ryan,

Actually I agree with you- and Neuroskeptic then.

Freud was living in Vienna at a time where sex was an obsession.Some sects are borrowing from Star Treck etc...And who wrote that even Jesus was a man of Tiberius &#039 time and culture?

My point was that scientologists and French psychoanalysts are making the most of the ridicule of the "sexiest neuroscience" that some -often good looking and articulate- people arer making money with ( sell books and seminars, publicity rights on their website-you name it.

On the contrary, in the history of engineering and medicine alike,you can see that very often the ones who did invent useful things and new concepts have a very hard time to be heard (from inventing the fax machine, the microwave oven, the shipcontainer to washing your hands before performing surgery and help birth delivery or to prove that a bacteria causes stomach ulcer etc...

@Ivana: I&#039m not sure there&#039s always a seller. The origin of the 10% brain rule, for example, is not exactly any individual.

I believe it began with psychologist William James, who said that he believed the average person didn&#039t use their entire brain. But the specific percentage was made up by someone in the 1930s, misattributing it to James. And then the weird paranormal psychology ideas came after that. These memes gather strength like a game of telephone.

I would wager that the origin of the 70,000 thought/day meme was someone who said something like "the average human thought lasts only 3 seconds" or "humans can think of 20 distinct concepts in a minute" or the like. Dicey, sure, but then someone else counted the seconds in a day and made a larger claim -- and then a dozen journalists hopped on that with varying translations.

So it may be more a question of why we buy the misinformation, rather than why someone sold it. In a lot of these cultural arguments, the sellers are all middlemen.

Neuroskeptic said...10 May 2012 08:10

///Ryan: (...) The same kind of people seem to buy into it...///



Neuroskeptic, Do you not think that the problem is not who is ti buy into it but who seels it?

In France some psychoanalysts child psychiatrists are making the most of pseudo-neuroscience to discredit the non -psychoanalytic approaches to help autistic persons (and their mothers).

petrossa,

///@Ivana
I don&#039t respect beliefs of any sort. Why should i? (...)
Sure, have them. But respect them?///

I do not think indeed that you have to respect the beliefs in anything unplausible or irrational.

I should have written I respect people who believe in whatever they fancy as long as they do not pretend it is science.

Thanks for making me thinkand write more rigourously petrossa .

One of the reason I would like to spend my last professionhal years working for aspies clients is that it is intelectually stimulating -when they are as clever as you are- and an Aspie client of any intelectual ability will almost always be critical and honest with his psychiatrist.

What I hate are good and honest looking people selling craps to the public calling it neuroscience - beware that it sells because the man is considered a neuroscientist.

Take the Dr out of Dr Deepak Chopra and I have nothing to complain about.



Those people just choose to ignore that antipsychiatrists (from sects like the scientologists and some sectarian psychoanalysts) are making the most of their scientific and moral shortcommings.

How I miss my grand psychosis of 2010, when I enjoyed as many as 70,000 days per thought...

I do not know the source of 70,000. But I sat down to count every thought that passed through (a thought is a complete sentence with a meaning as the basis). I counted about 13 per sec. In a totally relaxed position, it reduces to about half (long practitioners of &#039meditation&#039 perhaps could reduce the flux density of their thoughts thus by relaxation).

But another number that is bandied likewise is that you can observe about 40 info bits per moment consciously while the &#039unconscious&#039 mind processes 11 millions in the same time. Prof T. Wilson (author: Strangers to Ourselves) quoted this statistic in his book -- I could not find any supporting experimental data / source for this claim.

The number on 5/7/10 % of brain usage has been long ago debunked.

@Ivana
I don&#039t respect beliefs of any sort. Why should i? From alien abductions to the flying cookiemonster in the sky, they are all just random delusions.

Sure, have them. But respect them? Whatever for.

Neuroskeptic,

To be more blunt, my answer to your question is that 7 is a sort of "magical number"- at least in western culture -and if you want to sell well to the public any numbery passing thought of yours

to start your selling number with a 7 is a smart good marketing move.

PS: I did not intend to offend any religious or magical belief where 7 is a sacred number.I respect those beliefs and I was just pointing to abuse of thoses beliefs in magical 7.

7 is a number that sells like in :

7UP drink , 7-Eleven convenience stores.

Antiquity had seven architectural wonders in the world, seven muses. In ancient Rome -if I remember correctly- we had seven kings and seven emperors and seven hills (still there ).

etc...

Some neuro scientists of sort are able to sell what should be labelled " passing thoughts" to the general public -and sometimes to their pairs reviewwing their papers.

I call them the sexy thinkers...

It&#039s interesting what "science fact" memes pick up speed in the popular imagination. They are generally factoids that point towards a sense of awe.

The common one I hear is "well, you know, we only use 5/7/10% of our brain. Just THINK of what we could accomplish if we used it all."

The 70k thoughts seems to play on a similar excitement: the glories of the brain! but condensed into a quantitative fact by science&#039s number crunching mechanism.

(the last apocryphal example: the average male thinks of sex every X seconds, where X = 3, 7, 10, etc.)

I think it&#039s a non issue but this is what internet thinks ;)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/182...

I don&#039t think "thought" is well defined.

I suspect the clue may be in the first digit -- another widely-&#039known&#039 factoid is that everyone can thing of up to seven things at once. So if you&#039re thinking seven things at one time, you&#039re probably thinking 7*bignum things in a day.

(Incidentally, my subjective estimate, based on improvising music, is that I have roughly one thought of the complexity "now play C#" roughly every quarter of a second when I&#039m concentrating on something, but I can go whole stretches of minutes at a time without having a coherent thought cross my mind at other times).

When I was a young associate attorney, the somewhat related question that my supervising partner asked me was how many $1,000 an hour thoughts a day I had. He claimed not to have any. I was rather more optimistic.

Thank you for your valuable informations..Here we introduce the best Ayurvedic Treatment Ajman,Ayurveda is an ancient system of natural and medical healing originated in India. "Ayur"means life and "Veda" means science. Thus ayurveda means science of life. It gives a total approach to health, healing and longevity. The holistic system of medicine is supposed to be the oldest form of health care system available on planet today. It is believed that other healing systems were influenced by the knowledge of Ayurveda.

Thank you for sharing your success story! I am very passionate at online marketing. I hope to be one day as great as yourself. Thank you for all your great advice and tips. It really helps people like myself stay inspired.