They discover how the brain has assimilated quantum concepts – Central Valley Business Journal

11/07/2021 at 10:30 CET

An investigation from Carnegie Mellon University has investigated something surprising: how the human brain has managed to manage the most advanced concepts of modern physics, which span the subatomic, quantum and cosmological realms.

Until the emergence of quantum physics and the most advanced discoveries about the universe, the brain of scientists managed comprehensible and measurable concepts, but those borders were blown up throughout the 20th century.

These scientific developments have not only been transcendental to give us an idea of the complexity of the world and the universe, but also revolutionized the traditional way of understanding matter and energy, with concepts such as wave-particle duality or dark matter, among others. Many.

Related topic: The brain knows how to anticipate the future and simplify the complexity of life

Concept adaptationThe new research has unraveled how the human brain has adapted to this conceptual revolution emanating from scientific knowledge.

Far from trying to locate where the brain stores all this complex information, the new research found out how the brain organizes highly abstract scientific concepts that are incomprehensible to ordinary logic.

Robert Mason and Marcel Just investigated the thought processes of their fellow physics faculty on advanced physics concepts, recording their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

They examined the activation patterns generated by new scientific concepts and found that physicists brains, when they encounter something disruptive, separate it from what it can take on.

Separation of conceptsThat is to say, the concepts that it can measure, it places them in one region of the brain, and those that it cannot measure or understand, it separates them in another neural space.

Another surprise found in this research was the great degree of agreement between physicists in the way their brains represented the disruptive concepts: although they were formed in different universities, languages and cultures, there were similarities in the brain representations.

This similarity in conceptual representations arises because the brain system that automatically comes into play to process a given type of information is the one that is intrinsically best suited to that processing, the researchers explain in a statement.

The researchers highlight in this regard: the same brain regions are activated in all scientists when processing a new concept.

Predictable patternsAnother significant result of this research refers to the fact that it is possible to predict which neuronal pattern is activated by certain disruptive scientific concepts.

With the data collected in this research, the scientists developed a mathematical model that can accurately predict the brain activation pattern of a new concept, for example, dark matter, with an accuracy of 70%.

This result, the researchers point out, indicates that it is possible to understand the brain organization underlying complex concepts, which is manifested even visually.

A brain scan developed in the course of this research allows us to appreciate the spots that the brain uses to identify the dimensions underlying complex concepts in physics, as well as the neuronal zone activated when it analyzes dark matter.

How did it happenThe new research also explains how the neural process has developed that has allowed the feat of assimilating concepts that had not emerged from perceptual experience.

The researchers explain in this regard that the neurons of the human brain have a large number of computational capabilities with various characteristics, and that experience determines which of these capabilities are used in various possible ways, in combination with other brain regions, to perform tasks of particular thoughts.

The genius of civilization has been to use these brain capacities to develop new skills and knowledge that were not anticipated in the previous worldview of the world, the researchers note.

What made all of this possible is brain adaptability: the scientific advances in physics that have marked human history in the last century were built on the new capabilities of human thought.

This realization is projected into the future: the secret of teaching new tricks to ancient brains, as the advancement of civilization has repeatedly done, is train creative thinkers to develop new knowledge and inventions, by building or reusing the inherent information processing capabilities of the human brain.

Most powerful entityThose new insights and inventions will be explained to others, whose brains will root them in the same information-processing capabilities that were used by the brains of the original developers.

In this way, mass communication and education can spread advances to entire populations, which will have the same capacities as the brains of scientists to take on new knowledge, even if it is disruptive.

That means that the progress of science, technology and civilization continues to be driven by the most powerful entity on Earth, the human brain, the scientists conclude.

ReferenceThe neuroscience of advanced scientific concepts. Robert A. Mason, et al.l. NPJ Science of Learning, volume 6, Article number: 29 (2021). DOI: https: //doi.org/10.1038/s41539-021-00107-6

Top photo: Josh Gordon, Unplash.

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They discover how the brain has assimilated quantum concepts - Central Valley Business Journal