When the human brain has a ‘thought’, an electrical impulse traces a pathway through the brain. Starting in one neuron, the impulse travels by electro-chemical means throughout from neuron to neuron - lighting up a distinct pattern. Every time the brain has the same ‘thought’, a similar pathway is traced.
If you are learning something new or having a thought for the first time - there is a high electrical ‘resistance’ as the impulse travels through the pathway.
After this ‘first thought’, the electrical resistance is somewhat lowered. In other words, the ‘trail has been blazed’ through your brain. When you have the same or similar thoughts again, it’s easier for the electrical impulse to travel through your brain.
Not only is this true for skills, but for emotions, attitudes and even everyday thoughts.
Every time we use our brains, we are creating new pathways or reinforcing old ones. That’s why changing our habits can be so difficult - after the first time having a thought, the electrical resistance in our brains will be primed to have that thought again. Learning new skills or changing our ways of thinking may be challenging at first, but will get easier and easier with conscious practice.
(accessed 12th March 2012)
I cannot now locate the exact book or script where I first read this idea. The above conveys the gist, but the original I read, which was such an inspiration for me, I remember as being similar. I read it when I was a teenager, about 17, and I still remember the impact of this idea. Although I had read quite widely, I had not before come across this philosophical approach to science, a practical or pragmatic form of philosophy. I did not yet see for myself how I could really affect my own thinking and choose my thoughts. Everything, and the way people were, seemed fixed, or of a limited kind of set of responses.
I think also “getting into” personal and expressive drawing at this time especially emphasised the sense of this to me. The idea about creating new pathways corresponded to my experiences as a musician, where after a certain amount of time skills remain in the fingers without as much conscious effort.
But it was above all, the hope conveyed which was a revelation. The hope of changing negative or spiralling thoughts or ill-serving habits, and an insight into how these may have emerged. It explained how it is so difficult sometimes to think in a new way, or to develop a complex thought.
I think I took this idea on in life and also deliberately in art practice. I think it’s why I like to see and show several versions of the same thing within my artworks – I tend to collect all the shades and angles of a piece. I always aim for the jolt of remembrance that there may be other ways to comprehend a thing, even if it seems fixed.
The analogies of light, of electricity, of the flow of water, of tendencies and resistances, of magnetism and shading – all these ideas that I use in my work, all stem from this one influential notion.
6th April 2012
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