Throughout our lives, we learn about the world around us, based on our experience. At the same time, the human brain continuously processes all the information received from the senses, establishing the relationship between the action performed and the result obtained. Have you ever wondered how chains of causal relationships are formed in the human brain, what processes take place?
Together with estet-portal.com, we offer you to get a little deeper into the mysterious secrets of the human brain, to understand the mechanism of its work, which allows us to gain and assimilate invaluable life experience.
1. Causal links: when they occur
2. How it happens: a little abstract theory
3. How the brain identifies and captures the "special" event
4. Formation of causal connections between neurons
5. Ability to share information – engine of progress
Causal links: when they occur
Imagine that an ultra-modern coffee machine was installed in your office, but negligent suppliers forgot to provide you with instructions, and instead of inscriptions near the buttons you see only mysterious hieroglyphs. You randomly press the buttons, pull the levers and even beat the insidious unit with your fist, but instead of the desired espresso, it gives you a cappuccino, latte or winks indifferently with light bulbs. Quite by accident, you manage to press the desired combination of buttons and get the desired result. How does your brain react in this case? At this climactic moment, he needs to understand that action A leads to result B.
The process of such understanding consists of two stages:
1. Was event B really the result of my efforts?
2. What exactly my actions led to the result – event B?
The questions are by no means simple, as we do many different things, each with some result. And, besides, a lot of events are happening around us, however, at the same time, we have nothing to do with them .
In other words, in order to get the desired result, the brain needs to establish a causal relationship between action A and result B.
How it happens: a little abstract theory
How is a certain phenomenon distinguished from the general flow of information and a causal connection of the event with the applied efforts is established?
In this physiological (or rather, biochemical) process, an important role belongs to dopamine– pleasure hormone. However, before delving into the details of the process, let's get acquainted with the two fundamental ideas on which the hypothesis that describes the work of neurons is based.
1. In our minds, a certain model of the structure of the surrounding world has been formed, which allows us to predict the course of further events. If our expectations do not come true, brain captures the event, highlighting it from the general flow of information.
2. The brain in "automatic mode" captures any recent activity, so every event that didn't match our expectations we can relate to what we just did. Once the link is found, the action can be performed again to see if it produces the same result. A positive result will mean that a causal relationship has been established.
How the brain identifies and captures the "special" event
But how exactly does the transmission of information that leads to the formation of causal relationships take place? As already mentioned, the role of the first violin in this symphony went to dopamine – a substance that is produced in significant quantities simultaneously by several parts of the brain.
The release of this neurotransmitter (dopamine), in this case, is similar to broadcasting a radio signal. Thanks to him, various parts of the brain receive information about a non-standard external event that contradicts the forecast.
At a conscious level, we react with a well-defined emotion – we experience surprise. There is evidence to support that it is the dopamine neurons that are "charged" with transmit information when the brain's prediction is wrong. In this case, they provide us with fixation of both positive and negative information. This is how you remember which actions will help you achieve the desired result, and which are best never repeated.
Formation of causal connections between neurons
So, the brain needs to extract from the total mass information about your actions that were performed before the brain noted the discrepancy between the forecast and the real result. It is the short-term release of dopamine, which is responsible for the transmission of information, that plays a decisive role in solving this problem. Information about the "special" The result is transmitted in the form of impulses through connections between neurons. If an impulse hits a neuron that was activated at the time you performed the actions that caused a non-standard result, this neuron is marked with traces of calcium. Now a stronger connection is formed between the two neurons.
What does all this mean in practice? Only that the need for the desired result activates the neuron responsible for the action required to achieve it.
But, if everything is so simple, why is verification required in the form of repeated experience? Exclusive in order to cut off the activity of neurons, "uninvolved" to solve the problem.
Of course, you do not think about it, the brain relieves you of the need to comprehend such actions, giving you the opportunity to solve global problems.
The ability to exchange information – engine of progress
Of course, the ability to establish causal relationships using universal trial and error is not the prerogative of the human race. Numerous studies prove that animals also have the ability to correlate an action with its result.
Moreover, many species have the ability to establish causal chains, imitating their relatives, which, of course, is much more effective than going all the way over again every time. A caring cat will definitely show her hunting tricks to the kittens, and the chicks will carefully watch how their parents get them food.
Fortunately, we have moved much further, because it was a reasonable person who came up with the speech – the most effective way to share your experience. By using language, we have learned to convey information in an abstract way, and therefore we do not need to spend time and effort on getting personal experience. We learn using the information left to us in various forms – in the form of books, films, educational videos and memories of a great-grandmother. Moreover, we have learned to establish causal relationships by analyzing large samples of certain information, which allows us to draw conclusions about the trajectories of the stars, exchange rates or global warming.
In our article, we only slightly opened the veil of secrecy, tried to understand the incredibly complex mechanisms of the brain and understand how we manage to establish causal relationships. The above scheme is deliberately simplified, because we have not even touched on many nuances, without which you would never be able to remember that tea is hot, lemon is sour, and the cup can break if it falls off the table. If the topic seemed interesting to you, continue to follow the release of new articles on the estet-portal.com website, we will definitely please you with new, no less interesting materials.
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