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What is so confusing about this? The first time I read a book, it impacts me in a certain way. Every successive time, it hits me differently. I take different l
by darkerside 5y ago
What is so confusing about this? The first time I read a book, it impacts me in a certain way. Every successive time, it hits me differently. I take different life experiences to it, and I understand it more deeply because I've read it before.
Why would a smell be any different? Each time I smell an apple, or taste wine, or examine a painting, I am a different person, and I also discover more nuance about the subject.
- Voloskaya 5y agoThat your brain continually learns and evolves is not surprising at all. What is surprising is that the location of the subset of neurons that reacts to a specific thing (say the smell of wine) changes over time. So neurons that were used to identify the smell of wine at time T, might be doing something completly unrelated 6 months later, and the task of identifying wine smell is now handled by another subset of neurons in the brain. It is surprising and on the surface seems ineficient since your brain has to continually transfer knowledge from one region to another rather that just ajusting the existing region to new learnings.
- rantwasp 5y agowe are making a big assumption here: that neurons have tasks and are responsible for X. What if a neuron (actually a cortical column) could learn thousands of X and fire only when specific environmental conditions are met? What if you constantly wire and rewire the connections between neurons? What if multiple areas can do some thing and they arrive at a conclusion through consensus? what if your brain can predict a lot of things and just discards sensory input when it matches the expected prediction?