The Fundamental Building Blocks of the Human Experience

June 1, 2018

Ah, the humble, amazing neuron! The neuron is the cell on which our entire nervous system is based. Neurons work in a remarkably simple way: they collect inputs from other neurons that either encourage or discourage them from passing on a signal themselves. Additionally, they consider more than whether the encouragement (technically called excitation) exceeds the discouragement (or inhibition). The excitation has to exceed the inhibition by more than a certain threshold, or minimum value.

This makes perfect sense at the level of our own conscious awareness. We’ve all experienced wanting to do something, but not wanting to do it enough to actually get up and get going. Of course, one neuron firing off a signal may be connected to a downstream neuron’s inhibition input. Hence, we may want to stop doing something, but not want to stop doing it badly enough.

This means there are two ways to not achieve a goal: either we are under-excited, or over-inhibited. Increasing our motivation may prove insufficient to overcome our inhibitions, a situation that likely resonates with most us. However, and perhaps less familiarly, reducing our inhibitions may appear to have no effect if we are also under-motivated.

Billions of neurons and trillions of connections make up our brain and nervous system, wired together in fascinating ways to build networks of both cooperation and competition. Some neurons have specialized attributes, such as the capacity to detect attributes of the physical world outside the nervous system. Others are sensitive to hormones carrying messages from other parts of the body or are generating the release of those hormones to send that message. Other neurons can learn and adjust their threshold to make firing easier with each repetition. Simply put, eating one potato chip makes eating the second easier, which makes the third and subsequent chips easier yet!

The neuron (well, some neurons — more on that later) is essentially an entity that makes a comparison. My belief is that these comparisons are a fundamental process behind much of the operation of the mind and address such questions as “Do I fit in?”, “Am I good enough?”, “Can I manage this?”, “Am I hungry or satisfied?”, and the like.

All this may seem rather basic, or even rather unrelated to the art and science of creating for ourselves the changes we intend to improve the quality and enjoyment of our lives, and perhaps it is. However, these are the fundamental building blocks of human thought, experience, and behavior, making them concepts important to understanding what is going on regarding our sometimes bewildering inner world.