What Fires Together, Wires Together
The human brain functions primarily on the basis of pattern recognition. This is a really important idea in this discussion so let me say that again: the human brain functions primarily on the basis of pattern recognition. Learning is fundamentally a neurologic activity where patterns of data are stored in the relationships of neurons folded over one another in what one brilliant neurologist refers to as neural origami.
Your brain stores data in the context of patterns and those “patterns” are stored in an interwoven network of neurons. The human brain starts learning patterns from the minute it is introduced into the external world. Another important fact to remember is that the human brain learns in the context of what it already knows.
For instance, the brain of an infant takes a “snapshot” of the ball in it’s hand. They see the shape (they don’t yet know that it’s a sphere), they see the color (which they don’t yet understand is the pattern for “red”) and they throw this onto the floor and to their delight it bounces! What do they do next? They begin to test hypotheses. Anything that is “red” goes over the side of the crib to see it if will “bounce.” Anything that is a sphere goes over the side to see if it will bounce. When it does, they are delighted and the origami in their brain for balls (or objects that bounce when thrown) is unfolded and the data stored within is expanded to include things that are yellow, green or blue. The brain has developed expertise in recognition of the pattern of spherical objects that bounce when thrown, which we call balls.
The simple process that governs the creation of neural origami is the idea that neurons that fire together, wire together. That is to say that the human brain builds a relationship between neurons that are excited at the same time. The child described above may recognize the visual input that represents “red.” The child may recognize the visual input that represents “sphere.” When the object is dropped, the neurons in the portion of the brain that processes spatial relationships may excite and the child now has a network that integrates all three concepts. That network is expanded each time a spherical object of whatever color demonstrates with the spatial experience of bouncing.
Henry David Thoreau once wrote that, “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”
So it is with neural origami. The glue that holds these “networks” of neurons together is the concept called long-term potentiation. Long-term potentiation is the strengthening of the relationships between individual neurons as they repeatedly fire together. Neurons that fire together, wire together and long-term potentiation makes them stick: the greater the frequency with which a group of neurons fire together, the greater the strength of the “folds” among them.
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