Neuroscience Introduction

Neuroscience, by which I mean the study of the structure and workings of our brains, may seem a little esoteric for a practical course on achieving commercial results. But bear with me and I think you’ll find that an understanding of how your brain works can have a powerful influence on how you think, feel and act.

And the results you achieve.

In the coming topics we will explore:

• the associative architecture of the brain – how thoughts consist of neurons firing and connecting with each other. Firing neurons may connect with other firing neurons and become associated – when one fires in the future, so too will the other.
• connectome – the structure of your neural connections, created by your genes and experiences, mean that you are hard-wired to think in particular ways
• neuroplasticity – the structure of your brain changes throughout your life; you can change the wiring
• gates – how you think and act in a given situation can be affected by many variable factors such as mood, energy level or emotional arousal. The ‘streams’ of your connectome can be redirected
• patternicity and agenticity help us to understand the world but can lead us to confuse correlation for cause
• memory is not a thing but a process and it is subject to many distortions