Sublime

This Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind for how the neocortex works offers a radical possibility: that the basic unit of cognition is not the neuron, but the cortical mini-column (i.e. pattern recognizer). In other words, the idea that “neurons that fire together, wire together,” which emphasizes the plasticity of individual neurons and is known as

that we each have four distinctive groups of cells, divided between our two brain hemispheres, that generate four consistent and predictable personalities.

If you want to see what a person who is totally removed from relational interaction looks like, examine the brain of someone who endured prolonged solitary confinement in prison.

Shelley H. Carson, author of Your Creative Brain,

Repeating a habit leads to clear physical changes in the brain. In musicians, the cerebellum—critical for physical movements like plucking a guitar string or pulling a violin bow—is larger than it is in nonmusicians.

What they found instead, to their initial chagrin, was that our prefrontal cortices almost always slow down and grow quieter when we interact with others.