Until a few years ago, I always understood cavities as someTHING you can get on your teeth rather then an actual cavity/hole forming on your teeth. So how do I go from knowing a cavity as a word or object to understanding it as what it is, a cavity in my teeth. Is this simply caused by my stupid brain making a new physical connection between neurons or something else perhaps?
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Understanding is about mental models. Basically, the neural connections in your brain represent a logical structure that your brain can manipulate, inspect and use to predict consequences in the world. Your first mental model was of something on your teeth – you could visualize and discuss cavities and predict that they would damage your teeth; your model was somewhat useful even though it was wrong. Now you learned a better model which allows you to better reason about cavities, and your brain probably had to make a bunch of changes in connections to represent this new model.
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