How does the brain store our personalities?
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The brain is the most complicated part of the body, so much so that we don’t fully understand it, meaning this will be an extreme simplification.
The brain is divided into different parts that each have a specific task. The back of the brain controls what you see, while the front of the brain controls decision making. These different parts have to communicate with each other using neurotransmitters. The amount and kinds of transmitters in our brains can differ wildly between people.
Someone who is depressed can lack a certain transmitter that is supposed to tell the rest of the brain that they are supposed to feel happy. Someone who is violent could have extra transmitters that tell the rest of the brain when someone should start fighting. These balances of transmitters is what makes each of us have different personalities.
It’s a combination of structure (think layout of an electrical circuit) and chemical composition that predispose us to perceive things in a certain way and how we react in turn. This relatively stable predisposition in perception and behavior is what we know as personality.
The most accurate, simplest answer: we really don’t know.
We have some ideas about which regions of the brain are important for certain behaviors/functions/memories. But in terms of what actually creates personality, individual preferences, consciousness, etc? No clue yet.
If you want to know how the brain generally stores information like memories: It creates new connections between neurons, basically creating an extremely complex circuit board of on/off switches. Personality is probably stored similarly somehow, but again we don’t really know the full mechanisms.
The assumption you seem to have made here is that our personality is just some file that the brain stores and retrieves as it is needed.
Instead, it’s much more likely that our personalities are an emergent property of the entire brain. Our personalities are not static. They’re not even the same from one moment in the day to the next. Instead, they’re based on how our brain is wired, our personal experiences and the context of what is happening. Our personalities adapt to all of these. It’s actually a disorder if your personality is rigid like it’s just some sort of file that gets retrieved and has one setting for everything. That’s a personality disorder.
It doesn’t. Personality is the sum total of every conscious and unconscious interaction you have with others. It’s the result of your brain structure and chemistry via neurotransmitters. Change the structure (like with a brain injury) or chemistry (like depression) and you will see changes in personality, though your family and friends will still see aspects of your personality shine through because other aspects of your brain structure, chemistry, and memories are intact.
The personality is created by neural interconnections. These connections create what are called engrams. The interaction of thos neurons is what makes your memory and personality.
Your parents went to Walmart and bought the sperm and egg from the family planning section. Then they went to the pharmacy to consult with a LPMD (licensed Personality Medical Doctor) about what personality would be preferential to their future child and the doctor prescribed what month to combine the sperm and egg. While you were in the womb, your mom went to classes and watched videos to help your brain learn the behavioral patterns necessary to become adapted to the personality. This is what I was taught in sex ed.
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The brain 🧠 is an antenna we are just tuned into a frequency. our personalities are not stored in the brain rather they’re like cookies on a web browser and your ego is the software/user interface
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