Brain and Behaviour

• Neural plasticity

  The brain's ability to constantly shape and reshape itself to adjust to its environment, from development to learning to ageing, including the brain's response to injury and strategies for rehabilitation
• The brain

  • Comes with built-in "expectations" about the world
  • Keeps shaping its own expectations about the world
• How the brain shapes its own expectations

  1. Persistent correlated activity within a network strengthens the network

  2. Events inconsistent with existing networks have little effect
• Confirmation bias

  • Each time an event confirms an expectation (i.e., activates already-established connections), those connections will be strengthened further
  • Each time an event disconfirms an expectation (i.e., activates weak / indirect connections), it will hardly be processed at all
• Confirmation bias

  • Good for survival: Preferential processing of things with high predictive value
  • Effortless disregard of things that have no predictive value
  • Brains are extremely good at detecting relevant patterns
  • Brains are extremely bad at avoiding patterns that aren't there
• Stereotypes / prejudice

  • Expecting women to be timid and dependent
  • Expecting men to be callous and unemotional
• Superstitions

  • Expecting black cats to bring bad luck
  • Expecting to be able to feel someone staring at you
• Mental health

  • Expecting others to dislike you
  • Expecting to fail at all important tasks
  • Expecting never to have any luck
• Unlearning potentially harmful associations requires not only to build new networks but to destroy old ones (i.e., it's even harder than learning to play the piano)