My brain does four things related to skills, decisions and happiness:

• Collects and Translates Input
• Generates Emotions
• Stores Memories
• Provides Control

Input
My brain collects and translates input into representations. The representations create sensations. Sensations are what I experience.

Under a microscope, soft, scratchy, sweet, sour and Thursday all look the same. All of the information in my brain, all of my ideas and sensations, are represented by chemical reactions.

My brain collects information from sensory cells and creates representations of the environment inside and outside of my body.

There is no light or sound inside my skull.  What I’m “seeing” and “hearing” generates activity in the neurons in my brain. The activity in the neurons in my brain generates the sensations I experience.

I experience sensations from external information (light, sound, touch, odors, etc.) and internal information (hunger, balance, muscle contraction, etc). I also experience sensations caused entirely by thoughts (stored information).

Chemical reactions are the language of my brain.  Translating sensations and thoughts into the same language makes it possible for my brain to merge and compare new information and stored information.

The take-away: My experience of the world is completely in my own head and consists of a combination of new information and old information which has been collected and translated into chemical reactions.  If everything is working correctly (and If I’m paying careful attention), my experiences will match the world around me (green will be green and I can touch the table). If I’m not paying attention, or if things start to go wrong, disconnects will develop between how I experience the world and how the world actually exists.

Emotions
My brain generates emotions.  Emotions are comprehensive information assessments. 

My emotions are a comprehensive assessment of activated information in my brain (a combination of my current thoughts and my perceptions). There are three broad categories of signals driving my emotions:

• Stress Signals
• Interest Signals
• Social Signals

My behavior and my emotions are shaped by the sum of these three interrelated signals.  Just as different combinations of red, yellow and blue can create thousands of colors, combinations of signals from these three categories can create a whole spectrum of emotions.

To make matters more complicated, I have hundreds of millions of sensory cells and hundreds of millions of memories all tapped into circuits being constantly monitored for signals from these categories.

All of the information being assessed consists of representations, which means the thought of a lion or an insult can generate the same emotional response regardless of whether or not the lion (or the insult) really exists.

The take-away: Emotions are a complex and powerful driver of my behavior.  It’s not easy, but it’s worth the effort to trace out the triggers for signals in these three categories whenever I have a strong emotional response.

Memories
My brain stores memories. Memories are stored relationships between sensations.

My physical memories have two variables: the total number of connections and the strength of each individual connection.

When I learn, a combination of two physical changes take place in my brain:

• The number of connections in my brain changes.
• The strength of individual connections change.

Memories are a record of relationships between sensations.  As a mundane example, my truck is not particularly special but I’ve owned my truck for seven years so my truck has a lot of memories associated with it. The color, items I store in my truck and fuel efficiency are just a fraction of the information that is tied to the idea of my truck in my brain.  Blue, jumper cables and 18 mpg all entered my brain as sensations (primarily sights, sounds and feelings) and are all stored as links to my mental representation of my truck.

My memories (everything I know about every person, place, thing and event in my life) have two components: a list of associations and a context based value for each association (my winter jacket is important in the context of Pennsylvania in December.  My winter jacket is not important in the context of Pennsylvania in July).

The take-away:  For me to get “smarter”, I need to increase the accuracy of my associations and the accuracy of my context based value assessments.

Control
My brain provides the ability to control input and the ability to control action. 

I’d like to think everything I do is a conscious choice but it’s not true and it’s not practical. If I had to consciously filter oxygen, digest food or pump blood, I would die.

Most of what I do is habit. Habits are actions linked directly to cues to produce specific results.

After receiving a cue, it takes about 50 milliseconds for my brain to initiate action.

It takes about 200 milliseconds for me to become conscious of a cue.

In a dynamic environment full of information, my subconscious is operating four times faster than my conscious.  With hundreds of millions of sensory cells and hundreds of millions of stored associations (memories), I may be completely oblivious to what initiated my current thoughts, emotions or actions.

I can only consciously do one thing at a time. Reactions and the ability to link actions directly to cues increases the amount I’m able to do (walk, talk, chew gum, filter oxygen, digest food and pump blood) and the speed I’m able to do it.

Once a movement is a habit, I don’t have to think about it any more. I don’t have to consciously control my legs to walk.

To deal with variation, consciousness provides the control necessary to interrupt automatic responses and shape future behavior.

Conscious control is slow, sloppy and energy intensive but essential for survival and adaptation. My brain allows me to consciously control my body to veto impulses, gather more information or deliberately control actions to handle variety in my life.

The take-away:  My brain provides a conscious control capability, but anticipation is more effective than reaction. Using control to build habits and prepare ahead of time is more effective than continuously micro-managing daily activities.

For more information on skills, decisions and happiness – click here.

Go to:Notes On The Brain

Six things happen as information flows through the brain:

1) Links. Memories are stored as links between neurons. The links store associations between sensations occurring at the same time. The links are formed automatically – “neurons that fire together, wire together.”

2) Bundling. As links are formed, information is tied together. Using written language as an example, lines are bundled to form letters, letters are bundled to form words, words are bundled to represent ideas.  Your thoughts and feelings on global warming or same-sex marriage or abortion or gun control are your thoughts and feelings.  Your thoughts and feelings about an issue, a person, an idea or an object are a bundle of your experiences.  Everybody has their own bundles.  How you bundle experiences determines your focus, your perceptions, your judgements, your emotions, your actions and your habits. 

3) Comparisons. Comparisons are automatically made between memories and comparisons are automatically made between memories and perception (perception is current information from the senses augmented and filtered by existing links).  The comparisons trigger emotions, which are the sensations caused by hormone release.

4) Filtering. Memories and emotions filter information as it passes through the brain. Existing links between neurons determine information pathways. The release of hormones from comparisons effects the distribution of the fuel powering the links in the brain.  Fuel distribution determines which signals get amplified and which signals get lost in the noise. 

5) Representations. Sensory inputs are combined with memories to form representations of what’s going on inside and outside of the body.

6) Coordination. Links between cues and actions coordinate movement. Cues go far beyond the five traditional senses and can be extremely precise. 

All six actions are automatic and subconscious. All six actions are driven by the structure and chemistry of the nervous system. The brain doesn’t “do” any of these actions, the actions happen as information flows through the brain.  Conscious effort applied to growing new links (i.e. learning) will influence how new memories are formed and used. Memories shape thoughts, perceptions, emotions and actions. Your memories are your life.

Go to:Notes On The Brain

Learning requires fuel.  Forming new links between cues and actions (learning) requires fuel. Developing habits (memorizing the links between cues and actions) is a biological process – the links are literally grown and growing takes time and fuel.  The length of time required to grow a link depends on the amount of fuel burned. The strength of signal, resistance in the mental pathway, and frequency of repetition determine the amount of fuel burned and the strength of the link (how well the association is memorized).  Strong signals, high resistance, and repetition drive stronger associations. Highly emotional, unexpected events (emotion amplifies signals and unexpected events have high resistance because there are no existing links) can instantly create a life-long association (an instant, enduring memory). Attempting to memorize associations with no emotional connections and lots of distractions (low energy, widely distributed through the senses) will form weak links which are easily forgotten.

Fuel limits determine learning limits. There are limits to the amount of fuel available in the brain and the rate the fuel can be burned.  Learning is limited by the number of new associations that can be fueled at one time.  

Focus controls fuel distribution.  Focusing on a sensation turns up the volume on that sensation, burns more fuel and creates stronger links. Turning up the volume on one sensation robs fuel from the other senses, turning down those sensations and reducing the chance associations with those senses will be remembered. Deliberate choice of focus points prioritize the memorization of associations.  The choice of focus points changes over time and determines how fast and how well a new skill is acquired. 

Focus points will shift as skill improves. As habits form and strengthen, less energy is needed to power the links between cue and action. Strong habits are subconscious and don’t require conscious focus, so as skill increases and basic motor actions are memorized, focus can be shifted to a more productive area. As an example, when learning guitar, a beginner is completely focused on where to place their fingers. As skill improves and chords are memorized, focus shifts to listening to the music and playing along. The guitarist no longer consciously thinks about how to play the chords.

Go to:Notes On The Brain

Ten Strengths:

1. The ability to combine information from multiple sources.  The human body has millions of sensors that monitor both the internal and external environment. The brain is where all that information is combined into a single coherent representation. 

2. The ability to learn automatically.  “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” The brain automatically stores associations of sensations that happen at the same time. Stored associations continually build on each other, helping to augment partial information and link new experiences into a knowledge base.

3. The ability to learn deliberately.  Everything happening inside the head is a representation.  Memory paths allow you to tap into two previously unrelated experiences, light up those representations and either consciously form an association without having experienced it (the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776) or “what if” an association before experiencing it (what if I mix chocolate with peanut butter…).

4. The ability to detect change. When stored associations are repeatedly triggered, the output of the neuron is reinforced. The reinforcement increases the efficiency of transmission, providing a mechanism to sort out what has changed and what hasn’t. You tend to gradually ignore the familiar and focus on the new. (The Talent Code provides an outstanding description of how the outputs of neurons are reinforced). 

5. The ability to make comparisons.  As information travels through the brain, comparisons are constantly and automatically being made. Different memories are compared to each other and current perceptions are compared to stored associations. The results of the comparisons are frequently expressed as emotion.

6. The ability to adapt to the unknown. Most information from neurons is transmitted across synapses, which are small gaps between the neurons. The ability to transmit information across a gap provides humans with an amazing ability to react when there was no previous association and adapt to the unknown.

7. The ability to react quickly.  Neurons are capable of firing hundreds of times per second. Information travels through the brain along multiple paths. Emotions amplify signals. All three of these characteristics allow humans to develop remarkably precise and remarkably fast reactions – often resulting in life saving movement before a threat registers in the conscious.

8. The ability to understand impact across a broad domain. There are billions of neurons in the brain with trillions of connections between them. Information flows through the brain along multiple paths stimulating stored associations along the way. The result is the ability of the brain to very quickly activate representations of associated sensations across many, many different experiences.

9. The ability to express concepts with symbols.  Shapes are bundled together and stored as letters, letters bundled together and stored as words, words are bundled together and stored as concepts. A concept can then be associated with a symbol which in turn represents the concept (like $). The ability of humans to express concepts with symbols and then transmit signals across distance and time enables each individual to leverage the discoveries of every other individual. 

10. The ability to link very specific actions to very specific cues. Individual neurons transmit information as digital signals with strength characterized by firing rate. A neuron fires and resets when it’s inputs reach the firing threshold. The rate of firing varies with the strength of the input signals, so a single neuron can cover a range of different input, firing at say 50 times per second for a weak signal and 200 times per second for a strong signal. On the receiving end, a single neuron may receive input from hundreds of other neurons. The ability for a single neuron to react based on hundreds of different input signals, each with a wide range of coverage enables very specific signals to be stored as cues and linked with very specific actions.

Five Weaknesses:

1. Black Swans. Nassim Taleb calls them Black Swans. Donald Rumsfeld calls them unknown unknowns.  Black swans are things that lie completely outside your realm of expectation.  Your brain can’t compare something you know to something you don’t even know you don’t know. 

2. Time. “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” The longer the delay between an event and it’s impact, the less likely you are to form an association. Ice cream is a good example. Eating a big bowl of ice cream every night delivers short term pleasure but degrades health over the long term. Because there is a delay between the event (eating) and the impact (weight gain, appetite disruption and insulin resistance), there is a good chance you won’t associate “just one bowl” with declining health. It’s possible to deliberately learn time delayed associations but the longer the delay between cause and effect, the less likely automatic learning will take place. 

3. Self. The down side of the brain’s ability to form a coherent representation from the millions of  sensors in the body is the “self” as a reference point. The “self” as a reference point leads to assumptions of understanding between individuals, value judgements based on how easily you can connect the dots in your own head, and decisions focused on impact to the “self.”

4. Action. Poor decisions are often made when there is not a direct link between cues and actions. Habits allow automatic actions based on specific cues. “Irrational” decisions are often a case of habitual or emotional reactions generating results before deliberate thought can be applied to a theory or concept.

5. Emotions. Emotions focus attention. Focused attention limits available information. “Seeing red” is an expression that accurately describes an individual who is so enraged they can only focus on the object causing the anger. When extreme emotion kicks in, all higher thought (including considerations of future impact and consideration of available options) is shut down and all peripheral sensations are shut out.

Go to:Notes On The Brain