Author: Loretta Breuning
Notes:
- 4 Types of Chemicals
- Dopamine: Rewards actions, builds motivation
- Endorphin: Ignore pain, escape harm, builds motivation
- Oxytocin: Builds trust, safety in companionship
- Serotonin: Get respect and social hierarchy/dominance
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- Cortisol: Anxiety and Stress, build caution
- Hormone release tapers or drops over time, thus we seek thrills or new rewards
- Neurological Learning
- Myelin
- Experience makes neuron efficient
- Build faster at younger age, harder to retrain as older
- Synapse Enforcement
- Learning is enhanced by
- Repetition
- Time-based repitition triggers wiring
- Emotion
- Heavy emotions trigger instant wiring
- Synapse Growth
- Grows between used neurons
- Pruning
- Majority pruning between 2-7y/o
- Creates focus on learning
- Emotion Receptors
- Undergoes growth and atrophy
- Depending on receptors, we can be overwhelmed with emotion
- Brain adapts to it over time
- Triggers of learning
- Mirror neurons + Happy Hormones
- Animals
- Smaller cortex
- Animals rely more on preloaded programs
- Humans
- Large cortex and numerous neurons are metabolically costly
- Humans have larger cortex and are able to learn from experience
- A lot of Neural learning is done in childhood
- We can remodel our neural pathways through repetition and emotion