"Concentration". Why the brain works the way it does. Totally fuckin awesome.

Our brain is far more sophisticated that you can imagine.

I often ask myself how come sometimes I AM able to concentrate and learn new things and other times I am UNABLE to concentrate?

This is how I think it works, simply put:

Our brain 'discriminates' in a sense. It only lets some types of information run through it while rejecting other types of information. The information that you are trying to concentrate on needs to fall into a certain category of interest that you decide on in order for you to be able to concentrate properly.

What happens when someone decides to teach you Advanced physics and you are only familiar with algebra 1?
Your brain backs off, it shuts down its 'concentration' abilities; Basically, telling you that this category (advanced physics) is not in-line with your interests.

What happens when you are Chef and someone asks you to calculate the portions of the ingredients for cooking for 4 people instead of cooking for 1 person? Which you already know.
Since you are a chef, your brain allows you to 'concentrate' on this subject matter because it is within your categories of interest, it tolerates the information that is coming in and has no problem spending its brain power on this subject matter.

So, how do humans learn new things where the subject matter is not in-line with their interest?

Well, The brain simply acknowledges that you are trying to learn something that is NOT in within your normal interest categories. Normally, Your brain would back off and you would be unable to concentrate on the new subject matter unless you completely give in to trying to learn something new. When you completely give in to trying to learn something new it becomes one of your brains categories of interest, and now your brain does not 'panic' when it comes across a situation where you are trying to learn something new that is not in-line with your interest categories.


Naturally, Your brain is not prepared to use its potential on everything that is not within your categories of interest. That is, unless learning things outside your categories of interest is in fact, A CATEGORY OF INTEREST. Basically, you NEED to tell your brain what IS worth wasting brain potential on and what is NOT worth wasting brain potential on. This decision is made unconsciously.

THE BAD:

People these days narrow their categories of interest. They minimize their brain activity in order to be "worry free". Learning something new and complicated involves frustration for the student at times. Someone that is trying to be worry-free does not want to even bother wasting their brain potential on the things they cannot instantly benefit from. This is called pure-laziness. The more categories of interest a human creates within in his brain, the more information he allows his brain to process. The more information that you allow your brain to process, the smarter you become, the more your education level and knowledgability advances.

 

Anyone?

 

i havent got the attention span to read all of that

maybe i will in a while

 

I like it, it makes sense... and I totally get what you mean about people limiting the range of their interests to be "worry free". It surprises me when people are shocked that I can do things like fix cars, fix computers, learn bass, and love literature without exploding. Certainly helps that I haven't watched TV in about 7 years... it's a major time and mind waster.

 

Morg 9 thanks for the reply, I was interested in what people think about this...

 

Not many people are going to reply cuz like you said the brain only takes in info that interests them and not many people can get a grasp on brain function and they just give up, your post is def interesting man i already knew how the brain only takes in information that is necessary and throws out the pointless junk, but i like your last paragraph and i agree that people need to expand their minds more and be open to new ideas to help advance their brain for the better. peace

 

I agree, but its even more complex than that.

 

isn't it fun to use the mind to look at the mind
nice post, i enjoyed it

 

thanks guys! i really appreciate the replies

 

Yeah man our brains are a wonder but I think it was not designed to cope with all the information that is available it this day of age. Rather its based on the survival mode but as usual evolution is being a bitch and over done itself by building the brain layer after layer when will it stop?


In order to remember important information quickly so it cant be used instantly at any given time (u know for survival) eg if a big ass beast is thinking that we look tasty, any one that stops to ponder why should they run will end up well as nourishment for the beast and then for the plants in a brown form ahh the beauty of the cycles of nature. In short our memory's have to be always in fragmented state and all the brain space has to be cleaned up of all the junk files in order for it to work fast.


Basically when we remember say a joke from years ago we don't remember the date we heard it first, where we heard it or what weather it was at that day. For remembering this would be a burden that would clog up the pipe lines.


It would be like oh I know jokes lets see now my date of birth day by day my understanding of the world,language... I heard my first joke no this one is no good another day another day.. oh this will work.


Instead we have all the important information fragmented and filed under a certain category's that intervain with each other so when we thing about a joke we first go under human interactions then situation we are in then funny then jokes and there u go. I read that this is why some time ppl will steal a great idea and be totally convinced that they are being original, when our brain is like hey man I know how we can explain this phenomena and we are like oh cool where is this information coming from? I don't know it must be from u.


So when u say the brain shut down when it hears advance physics I think is because the brain is like man there is in no point I will never remember all of this stuff I have no links to tigh it all down with. That's why it all has to start from the basics so that u could link this new file to an existing one and build it upwards from there which in turn becomes an extension of ur interests.

 

You should also take into the consideration the specific design of the human brain. There is more than one type of learning, and within each type of learning there will be some things which the brain is proficient at processing and other things which the brain cannot process well.

To clarify my point, consider language acquisition. Language acquisition is a type of learning. Developing infants acquire language without any formal training. Given that spoken language is incredibly complex, and given that infants acquire language without formal training, it is reasonable to conclude that parts of the brain are constructed in a way that is optimal for language acquisition.

For any type of learning it is important to ask whether the learning in question is being carried out through general mechanisms or specific mechanisms.

 

Actually we record everything. Minutia are filed into broad categories. Concentration has nothing to do with this automatic sorting, but is rather a sympathetic system.
Humans learn new things because knowledge flows freely into an open mind.

 

My only real comment, other than "uh.. yeah.", is why did you put quotes around discriminate?

 

I was trying to emphasize that its not the exact word I was wishing to use and wanted the reader to not read it literally, you know? To be honest, i dont really know if it is important lol it just felt right at the moment.

SO, thats all the comments you have? "uh..yeah." ?

 

Yeah, it seemed like pretty logical and straight forward observations to me. I don't know why I said it like such a dick =P

As far as the discrimination, I just had to point that out cause that's a major pet peeve of mine. People acting like any discrimination is bad. No. Discrimination is only bad within certain contexts - in other contexts discrimination is a very very good thing.
I think most people don't discriminate enough these days. They find their niche and they like everything that fits within that niche, just cause it matches. (Oh, I'm a druggie kid now, I love Trainspotting, I love Requiem for a Dream, I love KIDS, I love...)
They start listening to this one musician, and every thing that musician makes is golden, just because that's the musician they like. No thought.
No thought put into anything, no discrimination of quality.

 

Dope I often enjoy your posts but I think you could not be farther from the truth on this one. We do not record everything. A huge amount of data reaches the senses everyday and a huge amount of that data will never be processed into memory.

Also attention and concentration are absolutely important for memory. People only remember things that they attended to, even if only for a matter of seconds. If the brain does not attend to a piece of data, then that data has no chance of being processed by the memory centers of the brain.

As for your last statement that "Humans learn new things because knowledge flows freely into an open mind." Well that makes nice poetry but I don't think there is any real content in that statement. Any content that I can pull out of it is factually wrong. Learning is a complex bio-chemical process shaped by species specific processing capabilities, not the result of knowledge flowing freely into an open mind.

Duck you are right about discrimination not being necessarily negative. In psychology the term discrimination simply means the ability to distinguish one stimuli from another, and this forms the basis of all perception.

 

who backs off?
whenever I encounter something I don't know or something I'm not familiar with, I'm drawn to it

 

Like I say the minutia is filed into categories that are patterned assumptions developed from repetition. All of the available light reaches the eye but it is the anomalous texture that stands out. Gives the impression you are observing only small bits at any time. Further, there are many different sets of patterns that are cued to focal length.

Our sensory feedback loop consists of a nervous system, not just a brain. Our nervous system has both parasympathetic and sympathetic functions. There is much more away from contemplation processing that goes on than is consciously assumed.

Since it is a poetic statement it's content is the subjective applied to the object, a sense of what it feels like to learn. Learning something new requires a peculiar type of attention. To see, we open our eyes.

 

I wasn't really talking about someone using their conscious decision making ability to decide to try to learn something new. I was talking about the unconscious brains reaction to some new subject that seems complex and not exactly interesting to the person trying to learn it....

reread my thread there is more to it besides just "backing off"...

Thanks for the reply

 

irrelevant b/c there's no free will anyways