Let’s say you are stuggling to understand a math concept for a while and suddendly you get it. What mechanism caused it?
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Assuming you’re at an appropriate learning level, you already have all of the abstract knowledge comprehension to understand the concept, but your brain hasn’t made the connection yet. Literally.
Your neurons are firing in groups that you know relate to the concept, but somewhere else are neurons that once included in that neuron firing chain will result in a deeper understanding.
The main thing that solidifies a memory is dopamine. When you learn something new, dopamine is released by the brain and that encourages your braincells to reinforce the memories that were just made.
When you finally understand something, you have made new connections in your mind. You keep checking the connections you are making to see if they “make sense.” Once you finally develop the connections that create the logic you need, you recognize that you have the right answer, and a rush of dopamine hits your brain.
It’s trial and error with a hit of dopamine once you get it right.
Neuroplasticity allows your neurons to form new connections and strengthen important existing ones. I can’t really answer this question, that sounds more like a cognitive/behavioral kind of thing, but physically this is what’s happening. As you put more effort into understanding a particular math problem you strengthen those connections responsible for math and become better at it. You can be wrong about it, it wouldn’t be any different than if you thought you were correct.
They are also different for each person, if I had a device that could read your mind I wouldn’t be able to make any sense of it since it’s not in English. I would have to train my interpretation software for your specific brain, and it would probably require constant calibration.
Assuming you’re at an appropriate learning level, you already have all of the abstract knowledge comprehension to understand the concept, but your brain hasn’t made the connection yet. Literally.
Your neurons are firing in groups that you know relate to the concept, but somewhere else are neurons that once included in that neuron firing chain will result in a deeper understanding.
Nobody knows for sure. What we can tell for sure is that specific neurons forming specific connections (technically synapses they don’t touch) and specific neurons firing together in specific sequences cause thoughts and memories and learning.
So presumably you’re just training your brain to create a new pattern of neuron operation that depended on previously established neurons and you grasping the concept somehow changes the patterns.
We truly do not understand this as well as we’d like to
Neuroplasticity allows your neurons to form new connections and strengthen important existing ones. I can’t really answer this question, that sounds more like a cognitive/behavioral kind of thing, but physically this is what’s happening. As you put more effort into understanding a particular math problem you strengthen those connections responsible for math and become better at it. You can be wrong about it, it wouldn’t be any different than if you thought you were correct.
They are also different for each person, if I had a device that could read your mind I wouldn’t be able to make any sense of it since it’s not in English. I would have to train my interpretation software for your specific brain, and it would probably require constant calibration.
Assuming you’re at an appropriate learning level, you already have all of the abstract knowledge comprehension to understand the concept, but your brain hasn’t made the connection yet. Literally.
Your neurons are firing in groups that you know relate to the concept, but somewhere else are neurons that once included in that neuron firing chain will result in a deeper understanding.
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