How the human brain works, in 8 keys

Understand well how it works brain it requires years of learning, and despite that, the level of understanding that we can have about this set of organs will always be very limited; It is not for nothing that the human brain is one of the most complex systems that exist.

On the other hand, there are some ideas that help to begin by better understanding this tangle of concepts that serve to explain what this part of the nervous system is. These are some of these keys.

Basic ideas about how the brain works

This is a list of ideas that I think help to understand the fundamental ideas about how the brain works. I recommend reading them in order, because they are ordered from the micro to the macro.

1. glia and neurons

A brain is fundamentally a set of neurons and glial cells. The latter are less well known outside of universities, but in reality they are much more numerous than neurons. (which is quite impressive, considering that an adult human brain has about 80,000,000,000 neurons).

What is each of these cell types responsible for?

Neurons are what create the flows of electrochemical signals that make up mental processes; Basically, everything that psychology studies is reflected in the way in which neurons communicate with each other.

Glial cells, for their part, fulfill very diverse functions, and until recently it was believed that they were basically responsible for protecting neurons and facilitating their movement. However, in recent years, research has appeared in which it is seen how cells Glial cells have their own communication network and can influence how glial cells relate to each other. neurons. In other words, we are just beginning to fully understand its importance.

2. The role of synapses

When it comes to understanding how the brain works, knowing how the communication networks between neurons work is as important, if not more, than knowing how each neuron works in a different way. individual, and that means that the points at which these nerve cells send information to each other are of crucial importance to neuroscientists and scientists. psychologists. The name given to these areas is "synaptic space", which in the vast majority of cases It is a small separation that opens between the cell membranes of the nerve terminals of two neurons.: one of them is the presynaptic and the other is the postsynaptic.

At synapses, the electrical signal that runs through a neuron is transformed into a chemical signal, that is, a torrent of substances that we call neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. These microscopic particles reach the nerve terminal of the other neuron and there, they are captured by structures called receptors. From that point on, the stream of chemicals received by the postpsynaptic neuron have an effect about the frequency with which this nerve cell will emit electrical impulses that may have effects on other nerve cells neurons.

This mechanism seems simple, but it really is not, because there are many types of neurotransmitters and of structures that interact with them, and at the same time each neuron is usually connected to many others at the same time: information is not usually passed on in a linear way, as in the telephone game.

3. Software and hardware are indistinguishable

It is common to try to understand the brain as if it were a conventional computer, but this comparison It is only justified in certain contexts, because it does not serve to capture the actual functioning of the brain. And one of the main reasons why a brain differs from a computer is the fact that in the former it makes no sense to distinguish between software and hardware. All the processes that are taking place in a brain materially modify the brain, and the structure of the brain itself is what makes neurons send nerve signals to each other: does not depend on programming codes.

That is why, among other things, the brain does not work with content that can be stored on a USB, as it happens with computers. You can play to interpret what happens in a brain in real time, and make this interpretation be structured as an understandable code for us, but we will have invented that code us; it does not arise from the brain. This does not mean that it is impossible to know in an approximate way what certain parts of the torrent of information that travels through a brain consist of.

4. brain plasticity

From what has been said before, this other idea is derived: that the brain is changing all the time, whatever we do. Everything we perceive and do leaves a more or less intense mark on our brain, and this brand, in turn, will make all those that are produced from that moment on be of one or another shape. In other words, our mental life is an accumulation of modifications, of neurons that tighten their ties and then loosen them according to everything that happens to us.

This ability (or, rather, need) of our brain to constantly change depending on the circumstances is called brain plasticity.

5. The role of attention

As much as the human brain seems like a prodigy of nature capable of doing quite impressive, the truth is that the data set you work with is always full of gaps. In fact, it is not even capable of properly processing all the information that is coming to it in real time. through the senses, and let's not even talk about remembering everything, something that only happens in incredibly exceptional.

What the human brain does is obey the principle of survival: what matters is not knowing everything, but knowing just enough to survive. Attention is the mechanism by which certain parts of the available information are selected and others are ignored. In this way, the nervous system is capable of locating information elements that are relevant to focus attention on them and not on others, all depending on what our aim. This mechanism gives a lot of play, because in certain circumstances it makes us appear to be blind to things that happen in front of our noses.

6. The brain makes things up

This point is derived from the previous section. Because the brain has a limited amount of "processable" information, there are some gaps in information. information you have to fill in without us constantly being forced to search for the information you lack. For it, there are some automatic mechanisms that discreetly cover those holes.

An example is what happens to the part of the retina that gives way to the beginning of the optic nerve. This is an area in which the eye is unable to transform light signals into nerve impulses, and therefore it is as if we had a hole in the middle of our visual field. However, we do not realize that.

7. The parts of the brain always work together.

Although the brain is made up of different anatomical areas more or less specialized in some processes, they all need to be well connected to each other to do their job well. This does not mean that all of them have to communicate directly with all the others, but rather that in order to function they must be wired to the "general network" of information that circulates through the brain.

8. The rational and the emotional go hand in hand.

Although it is very useful for us to distinguish between the rational and the emotional in theoretical terms**, in our brain all mental processes that we can link to one domain or another work together **.

For example, the parts of the brain most related to the appearance of emotions (a set of structures known as the limbic system) are the who set goals that are effectively tried to be achieved through action plans based on logic, and that will not stop anyway. be influenced by emotional factors that will make the rationale of these strategies quite relative, even if we do not realize it it.