It tries to constantly change its circuitry to maximize the data it can draw from the world. To that end, it builds an internal model of the outside, which equates to its predictions. If the world proceeds as expected, the brain saves energy.

This is the powerful difference between just in case information (learning a collection of facts just in case you ever need to know them) and just in time information (receiving information the moment you seek the answer).

Fundamentally, the brain is a prediction machine, and that is the driving engine behind its constant self-reconfiguration. By modeling the state of the world, the brain reshapes itself to have good expectations, and therefore to be maximally sensitive to the unexpected.

Consider one-trial learning, in which you touch a hot stove once and learn not to do it again. Emergency mechanisms exist to make sure that life- or limb-threatening events are permanently retained. But

The strategy of interaction with the world allows the colossal machinery of the brain to take shape from a relatively small set of instructions. It’s an ingenious approach for unpacking a brain (and body) from a single microscopic egg.

In contrast, baby brains modify across vast territories.

The system puts enormous work into shifting itself to a point where it can maximize information.

Imagine you could swallow a capsule that would renew your brain plasticity: this would give you the capacity to reprogram your neural networks to learn new languages rapidly and adopt new accents and new views of physics. The cost is that you’d forget what came before. Your memories of your childhood would be erased and overwritten. Your first

This is why people become desensitized (or tolerant) to a drug: the brain comes to predict the presence of the drug, and adapts its receptor expression so it can maintain a stable equilibrium when it receives the next hit.