John Eccles reflected deeply on the cerebellum, the unconscious organ (Eccles et al. 1967). Eccles remained a dualist to the very end (Eccles 1982), perhaps because he was unclear about the mind-body properties of the cerebellum, which we now think explains the greatness of Einstein, Kasparov, and Pelé (Tehovnik, Hasanbergović, Chen 2024). The cerebellum is the ultimate storage receptacle and functions according to connectivity matrices that link the declarative information of the neocortex to the motor system (Hasanbegović 2024). This yields the automatic and efficient execution of behavioral routines, given that consciousness is energy expensive (Herculano-Houzel 2011), just ask someone trying to operate a cortically-implanted brain-machine interface using consciousness (see Bublitz et al. 2018). Indeed, notice that the amount of neocortical tissue devoted to playing a violin with the left hand is less in a professional, highly-overtrained player as compared to an amateur, highly-undertrained player, whereas a comparable amount of cerebellum is activated in both cases (cf. Fig. 1B and IA).
The hippocampus, which is central to declarative learning, transmits information from the sensors to the neocortex serially (Berger et al. 2011; Corkin 2002; Deadwyler et al. 2016). And this process of consolidation is reinforced during immobility and during sleep as events are replayed serially during both NREM and REM sleep (Louie and Wilson 2001; Wilson and McNaughton 1994). Consciousness occurs in a stream and so does the execution of a volitional act, which explains why movement is a product of consciousness (James 1890; McFarland and Sibley 1975). But all automatic behaviors and current thoughts can be performed in parallel, as long, as the outputs are independent: as when we walk and reflect on our plans for the day while all vegetative functions of our body are maintained, but if any of this requires conscious redirection the neocortex can be summoned immediately (Merker 2005), as when one gets food stuck in one’s throat and must expel the contents using any means possible. And to compete against a parallel processor, a supercomputer, a human must be able to execute behavioral routines in parallel and automatically (e.g., Kasparov vs. Deep Blue).
Hence, according to the notions of Kahneman (2011) consciousness/learning is a serial process (or thinking slow) and unconsciousness permits for parallel processing (or thinking fast).
Figure 1: fMRI activity of the cerebral hemispheres (and left cerebellum) during violin playing using the left hand by an amateur player (A) versus a professional player (B). Data of figure 3 of Watson (2006).