Eli5:What happens in the brain when you finally understand something?

Question

Let’s say you are stuggling to understand a math concept for a while and suddendly you get it. What mechanism caused it?

In: 89

Answer 1

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