How the brain actually works

On Habré, articles about various techniques to improve performance, improve memory, self-motivation, etc. are quite popular. etc. Alas, often the authors of these articles are completely unaware of what the brain is, how it works and why everything is arranged that way.

First of all, you need to understand this:


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Thinking is expensive

The information given below is drawn, for the most part, from the book by S.V. Saveliev “The Origin of the Brain”, which I strongly recommend reading, along with the works of Richard Dawkins and Conrad Lorenz.

The brain arose as a result of evolution as a flexible, versatile and fast solver. Having a brain makes an animal much more fit, especially in extreme situations. However, you have to pay for everything: the brain is an extremely costly organ. In humans, an intensely working brain consumes a quarter (!) Of the resources of the whole organism. The problem is that the brain is never at rest; even a resting brain consumes 10% of the body's energy, while making up only 2% of its mass. In addition, the body is simply not able to maintain the intensive work of the brain for a long time, after some time, nervous exhaustion inevitably occurs. In addition, the brain, deprived of the necessary resources (oxygen first), almost instantly (within 5 minutes) dies.

Optimization

I suppose that most of the Habrovites have already imagined by now how to optimize the brain's energy expenditures. IT specialists in this regard have not come up with anything better than nature.

Option A: limit brain activity to only truly extreme situations. In human language, this mechanism is called "laziness." Man instinctively seeks not to think , as long as it is not necessary. Many animals, for example, cats, in general constantly reside in one of two states: either sleepy sleepiness or hyperactivity. Laziness is the engine of progress in the most literal sense.

Option B: cache. Put as many predefined behaviors as possible and turn on the brain only when the autopilot cannot solve the problem itself. Such optimization is peculiar primarily to small animals, but, as it is easy to see, having shown a minimum of observation, the man also uses it with might and main.

By the way, here comes the famous absurd myth that a person supposedly uses ten (five, two - underline) percent of his brain. At a particular point in time and at rest - in some approximation, yes. Because using the brain entirely without the need is expensive and unwise. But keeping 90% of the brain unused at all is even more expensive and unwise.

Reality

It often seems that a person’s behavior is stupid and illogical. However, in the light of the previous paragraph, it is quite obvious that human behavior is absolutely clever and logical. The question “what did you think about at all”, as a rule, has a simple answer: nothing. It is human nature to think about nothing, and this is from the evolutionary point of view the most profitable program.

Of course, in the modern world, most of humanity does not have any problems with nutrients and the mechanisms for optimizing energy consumption are not needed. But, alas, we cannot change our own genetic program; Yes, and there is no guarantee that a different scheme of the brain will be more optimal for homo sapiens.

Remember - expensive

From thinking, let's move on to memory. To understand the processes of memorization and recall, it is useful, first of all, to master one simple thing: human memory is energy-dependent. The storage of information is continuously spent the resources of the body. I think you already understand what this means :-).

First, the memory is divided into short-term and long-term. In the long-term memory gets only a small part of the flow of information.

Secondly, memories are continuously lost. The more time passes, the less information about the event remains in memory.

Remembering by chance

The probabilistic essence of memorization is superimposed on these already sad ones for students :-) processes. The fact is that memorization is the formation of stable cyclic networks containing the necessary information in a neural network. This process is not very fast and rather unpredictable. It is impossible to predict in any way at what point the configuration of the neurons will change. That is why a person often remembers completely meaningless and unnecessary information for the rest of his life - because it so happened that at the moment of the formation of a new configuration of neurons, he thought about this nonsense. In order to guarantee memorization, one has to constantly update information for a rather long period of time.

Memory is lying

As mentioned in the previous section, a person needs memory first of all in order not to think. Memorized decisions and behavioral models allow not to strain the brain, but to act on autopilot. This is actually the main function of memory.

However, due to the fact that memory is volatile, it is impossible to remember all the necessary information. On the one hand, new information is constantly coming in that could potentially be important. On the other hand, the old information is constantly losing relevance. Thus, old memories constantly compete with new ones for a place in memory. Moreover, in order to maximize the full use of the available resource, new and old information signals circulate in the same ways. As a result, old memories are constantly distorted, which eventually leads to rather unexpected effects, up to the complete discrepancy of the old memories of reality, and old memories with time become more and more idealized. This is typical not only for people, but also for other animals too.

Welcome to the Real World

I do not know about you, but I began to understand people's behavior much better when I read all this. Ideas about why the brain behaves this way, and not otherwise, in my opinion, is much more useful than abstract recommendations on how to improve performance and improve memory. I hope, and they will be useful to you.