Hi guys I'm Maya and I run Cortex Collective. Over the summer I studied under Harvard Professors and I gained new insights surrounding the brain. Specifically, how the brain learns. I'm going to simplify large concept so that you can better understand yourself and your own brain.

When our brain encounters new stimulus it asks two questions: Am I familiar with this stimulus and should I be afraid? Meaning, the stimulus passes through your amygdala and then hippocampus to address those questions. Your brain does this to see if it can connect this new stimulus to something it already knows. For example,  if a student knows how to add, it will be easier for them to learn subtraction because of the connections the brain can make between addition and the new stimulus - subtraction.

So, how does the brain make connections? Our brain is made up of billions of neurons. Dendrites are a part of the neuron. They're crucial for learning and memory. Dendrites receive incoming signals from other neurons. When you learn something new your dendrites grow. Harvard Professor Tracy Tokuhama-Espinosa stated, "What you know, influences what you can know" this is because the more dendrites you have, the easier it is for new stimuli to latch onto your pre-existing knowledge.

Now why is it that when I ask you what one plus one is you can respond with an answer much faster than if I asked what 5,789 plus 3,294 is?  This is because of myelin sheaths, which wrap around axons (another part of the neuron) and speed up the processing process. Myelin sheaths are formed through rehearsing stimuli. You've probably been asked "what's one plus one?" more times than you've been asked to find the sum of 5,789 and 3,294.

This leads to my last point - your brain can't unlearn anything. Meaning, any learned bad habit cannot be unlearned. The only thing that can happen if you want to alter a negative concept is by learning a new stimulus that contradicts the old and staying consistent until a habit forms. Remember, a stimulus repeated over time forms a myelin sheath if you repeat the new stimulus more than the old habit, the new stimulus will override the old because it's now stronger. Now that we know how the brain learns the next section will be on "how to learn efficiently" so that you don't waste hours trying to learn a concept.