Mind Matters

It seems appropriate to finish our story here, with the beginnings of an understanding of how we learn things. The whole process of how nerves work and how we learn things turns out to be just as awesome and fantastic as we would expect such a mechanism to be.

Whenever a new sensation comes into your brain, it sends a flurry of activity surging through a particular tangle or network of neurons. Each neuron involved not only passes on its message to other neurons, but sends a signal back to the neurons that alerted it. This feedback loop might amplify the signal, or dampen it down. After the initial signal has died down, the neurons involved reinforce their connections with one another, so that they are primed and ready to fire again much more readily if the same sensation comes in, like a well-trodden path through the brain. If the sensation is not repeated, the connections begin to weaken, as the path falls out of use.

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References and Further Reading :

Begley, S. The Plastic Mind (Constable & Robinson, London, 2009)
Doidge, N. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (Penguin, London, 2008)
Finger, S. Minds Behind the Brain (Oxford University, New York, 2000)
Gibb, B. The Rough Guide to the Brain (Rough Guides, London, 2007)
Greenfield, S. The Private Life of the Brain (Penguin, London, 2002)
Kandel, E. R. In Search of Memory (WW Norton, New York, 2006)
Levitin, D. J. This is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession (Dutton/Penguin, New York, 2006)
Morgan, N. Blame My Brain (Walker, London, 2005)
Morgan, N. Know Your Brain (Walker, London, 2007)
O'Shea, M. The Brain: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University, New York, 2003)
Pinker, S. How the Mind Works (Norton, New York, 1997)
Pinker, S. Stuff of Thought (Penguin, London, 2007)
Schwartz, J. M. and Begley, S. Mind and the Brain (Harper Collins, New York, 2002