Not everything you hear is true: the brain also needs time to think

BarcelonaYou open your phone and there is a news story that outrages you. Before you even finish reading the headline, you already feel like sharing it. You react, you write, you continue scrolling. And it is not an isolated incident. The problem, according to neuroscience communicator Núria Martín Muyo, is that we are increasingly living in this immediate response mode.

“We are in the middle of a permanent information tsunami,” explains Martín Muyo, author of The Emotion Trap (Destino, 2026). In this environment, she says, “ideas, news, thoughts... are mixed without any guarantee, and we don’t know if they are true or not.” And here a paradox appears: we have more information than ever, but not necessarily more time to evaluate it.

The brain can react very quickly to an emotional stimulus. This response is useful: if we are about to have an accident, it is not convenient for us to analyze all the possibilities before acting. But it is not as useful when what we have in front of us is a headline or information that requires context and contrast.

“An emotional thought is a direct reaction without any evaluation,” she points out. On the other hand, when rational thought intervenes, “there is a response, because there is an analysis, an evaluation, and a conscious and voluntary decision.”

The difference is important because not everything we think is necessarily true. “We have a tendency to give the status of truth to everything that crosses our minds,” says Martín Muyo. “If I feel it that way, it is true, or it is my truth,” she reflects. But an emotion can be real without the interpretation we make of it being correct.

The orange and the two brains

To explain this difference, Martín Muyo uses the metaphor of an orange. The pulp represents the limbic system, related to the rapid processing of information and survival-oriented responses. The peel symbolizes the cerebral cortex, where functions such as analysis, planning, attention, learning, and deep thought take place.

“The problem is that we are in the age of hyper-emotions,” he states. According to him, we have given excessive prominence to emotional and immediate responses, and have sidelined the capacities that require more time and effort.

It is not, however, a matter of choosing between emotion and reason. Emotions are necessary. The problem appears when we react before being able to assess what is happening. “We do not know how to distinguish” between rational and emotional thoughts, maintains Martín Muyo, and this leads us to confuse a first impression with the truth.

In a world built around immediacy, this trend can intensify. Social networks compete for our attention, and indignation, fear, and anger can arrive before reflection. Once we have reacted, it is harder to take a step back and ask ourselves if what we have just seen is true or if we are missing information.

“Everything has to be so fast that it seems others are thinking for us and offering us the illusion that these thoughts are our own,” he says. That is why he considers that critical thinking is also a matter of training: we must give the brain time to analyze, compare, question, and decide.

Thinking is also a matter of habit

Martín Muyo argues that the brain is plastic and that neural connections change depending on use and experience. As an example, she mentions the so-called Flynn effect, a phenomenon that for a good part of the 20th century showed a progressive increase in each new generation's scores on intelligence tests. According to the expert, however, the most recent data point to a change in trend: for the first time, a decline in these scores is being observed.

For this reason, the author considers that we are always in time to recover space for attention and deep thinking. "If we did exercises of this type, the cerebral cortex would develop more and gain prominence," she states. The problem, according to her, is that neither educational models nor communication nor the current social context are sufficiently oriented towards fostering this reflection.

The solution, therefore, is not to stop feeling. It is learning to create a pause between what happens and the response we give to it. Reading, informing oneself, cross-referencing, and accepting that it is not necessary to have an immediate opinion are also ways of using this "peel" of the orange.

For Martín Muyo, this should not only be an individual responsibility. She criticizes the fact that when faced with problems such as anxiety and difficulty concentrating, we are offered personal solutions –meditating, doing yoga, moving away from the noise– without taking into account the social conditions that favor them. She defends a "social shield" based, among other things, on making knowledge about how the brain works accessible to everyone.

"Let them read, let them get informed, let them take care of their brain," she recommends. Because, in an era in which almost everything invites us to react quickly, perhaps one of the simplest ways to protect ourselves is to recover something that seems not very revolutionary: wait a few seconds before accepting the first answer that comes to mind as the right one.