Mental Changes in Eternal Love
By: Kabil Khan
Tags: Emotions, Philosphy, Psychology, Love, Science

Mental Changes in Eternal Love

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

“We do not know the depth of love until the hour of separation comes.”

This phrase is from Khalil Gibran’s book “Prophet”. Does it also have the support of science? For this, a look at one of nature’s most important neural technologies.

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The brain’s function is to predict the future. When the circuit of the brain is changing, the main reason is to predict the future. The news that is supposed to remain the same does not remain news. The blood vessels in front of the eye disappear forever because the visual system is not predicted to change. And it gets ignored. The brain does not waste energy on this data unless something unexpected happens.

The brain does not want to expend the energy of neurons and therefore its purpose is to organize its network in such a way that its energy is used to a minimum. The silent nervous system will be where everything is going as expected. The world is going as it is predicted. Silence is golden. Many neuroscientists point out that the activity of neurons represents the activity of the world. But perhaps the opposite is true. Spike is an expensive energy-consuming task. An object that can be accurately predicted, its signal is silence in the jungle of neurons.

The surprise is the thing on which the system adjusts. If you have the same bricks in front of you and you think they all weigh the same, the brain will stop calculating the weight of the bricks. Just a shocking brick in terms of weight will draw attention to this.

Has it ever happened to you that you are completely lost in your thoughts and that is how you got home? Didn’t know when or where to turn, what came along the way? This is possible only if it is a way that is well known and the mind could make good predictions. But on the way, there was a sudden and unexpected event. Disrupted the flow of thoughts. The surprise is important, not normal.

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The brain is constantly re-calibrating to consume less energy, but there is a deeper principle here. In the captivity of the skull, the brain is modeling the outside world.

When you are close to home, pay less attention to your surroundings because the brain already has a good model of this area. But when you are looking for a special place in another city, you have to see everything. Road signs, shop names, building numbers. The brain does not have a good model of prediction here.

How to become a good model? What is the neural technology that will do this magic? Ignoring the unrelated will lead to what is expected? This neural technology is called “attention.”

A sound coming from somewhere, suddenly touching something, somewhere unexpected movement … The focus is on that. And that means high-resolution sensors are now tackling the problem and modeling it. “It simply came to our notice then. Neighbor’s children’s ball falls into the house. There was a hiss with a gust of wind. “ In contrast, “how the shoes feel on the feet” does not take place in the mind because its model is exactly as predicted, but if it gets pebbles, then the attention will go to it. The model is now calling for an update.

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The difference between prediction and outcome gives us a vital insight into a part of the learning process. If the prediction is perfect, the brain does not need to be changed. Being amazing and being untouched makes learning easier.

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With this background, it is now easy to understand how drugs change the nervous system. Drug use alters drug receptors in the brain to such an extent that molecular changes in the brain after a person’s death reveal what the drug was about. And that’s because the addict has become insensitive to it once he gets used to it. The prognosis of the brain becomes the presence of drugs. Biological details have calibrated themselves. And now that the system expects the drug to be present, the amount of the drug has to be increased in order to enjoy the drug. And it is this calibration that drives the symptoms of the ugly time of quitting. The more the mind becomes accustomed to it, the harder and uglier it becomes to give it up. Symptoms such as sweating, shivering, and depression depend on what the drug was, but they all have one thing in common. The mind is crying out for nothing.

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And it is this neural prediction that explains the heartbreak. The ones you love become part of you. Not metaphorically, actually. These people are absorbed into your inner model. The brain makes its presence part of its expectations. Breaking up, losing a loved one, losing a parent, or losing a loved one can upset the balance of life.

Beloved or friend, the parent, or loved one. These are pieces of the inner model of life for us. Just like feeling hesitant after landing on the shore from a boat. Drugs make you feel absent after quitting, just as the brain becomes accustomed to the presence of these people. Then when someone goes astray, goes away or does not stay in the world, then the mind focuses on not fulfilling that expectation. This is the grief of separation. It is a process of breaking the heart. There are tears of separation.

And then gradually, over time, it adjusts to a world that no longer has to go. The new becomes normal. Individuals or societies … Slow change doesn’t seem to matter.

Whatever happens, life comes back again. This is the charisma of the mind. Flexibility is a blessing.