Learnings from neurobiology

I took some time to go through with this great Neurobiology course. Our brain is incredible. Here are some random-ish learnings about its coolest processes. 🧠 ♥️

*It has to be said that I’m not a neuroscientist, I try to learn about humans and brain because well, yes, brain is incredible and also because I want to make sure I truly understand how it works because I design for human behavior. Information here is compiled to my best knowledge based on accredited resources.

Brain strives for efficiency

Brain wants to be very efficient and nearly everything below is about how we juggle efficiency and deliberate actions/thinking. For example that’s partially why optical illusions are possible: our brain tries to avoid confusion and while it sees both things through retina it spares us by perceiving one thing at a time.

Memories

Three types of memories – episodic (events), semantic (concepts) and motor – work and are stored differently.

Motor memories are the ones that are most difficult to forget. That’s why I can roller blade after a ten year break. Episodic memory is stored in neocortex but it also fires back into hippocampus during a recall and that’s why our recollections of events change over time. That’s also why Alzheimer will eventually affect episodic memory more than it affects existing semantic memories.

Some of the implicit memory types involved in knowing how to use a product are: procedural memory, say you remember how a process works; motor memory would be moving the swiping/tapping in a certain place; sensory memory (visual) – UI layout. That’s at least a triple hit on a person when we move stuff around. Re-learning a motor memory in particular is very effort consuming. So people aren’t pissed with changes in the products just because they “don’t like change”, it’s because implicit memory is useless (but still in action) and their brain now has to work hard to re-learn.

Cerebellum, overthinker that wants us to do well

Cerrebelum involved in motor function and, according to new research, possibly some cognitive and emotional operations is one of my favourites. The fella really wants to do a good job and make sure you do what you intended to do smoothly. That’s why it creates “copies” (40 times more input than output!) of the information and fires it back and forth.

There are two types of loops involved in its function: open and closed. An open cerebellar loop is important for learning a new action, but is not as fast as the closed cerebellar loop which is used for already learnt movements. If an athlete thinks “too hard” about how to complete a move there is a big chance they will perform badly – it’s because they will use an open loop as if they are learning again.

What exactly do we see

Visual attention is Thalamic attention. Sensory input goes from Retina into Thalamus and then to Primary Visual Cortex.

Now the fun part. Input from Visual Cortex is greater than from Retina. What does it mean? Input from Visual cortex tells us what we expect to see. Seeing is a perceptual habit. How great is that?

As with many other things it’s done to process visual scenes more quickly. It also means that if we expect to see something we are used to it will take an extra step to see what’s actually there after a change.

As instructor noted, “We are very “imperfect perceivers” of the world”, and our perception (a conscious appreciation of the stimuli) is very much an interpretation often based on what we already know.

Habits, motivation, dopamine

Have you noticed that it feels easier to just retype a typo “tje” into “the” than correct one letter “j”? It’s because typing “the” is a habit and it’s easier for our brain.

Studies of severe addiction show just how powerful habits are. As described in the course, at some point far into heroin use it might no longer result in a positive outcome for the user however they keep on doing it because the brain is cued and the habit fires.

In neuroscience terms habits are also chunks and chunking is how our brain combines several actions under one umbrella.

There are four dopamine pathways and they are responsible for learning and motivation among other things. Prediction error functions to drive learning about reward-predictive cues and facilitate more accurate predictions about future rewards. It’s a huge topic and this article is a good start to understand motivational (and other) function of these pathways.