Optimal brain process requires balance between excitatory and inhibitory neurons | Hacker News Reader

Optimal brain process requires balance between excitatory and inhibitory neurons

phys.org

49 pointsWaitWaitWha16 comments

In the first year or psychology you learn a lot of words and scientifical language. One of those words you learn is the "homeostasis". Which means the balance between highs and lows and how crucial is for a healthy life. You can study it in basic conditioning (a balance between stimuly, or you can create learned helplessness), in personality (a balance between happyness and depression makes you happier than the happiest person in the world), neuropsychology... and any other field with the same theory behind. So yeah, having balance between everything in your life is the most important thing you can achieve.

As an amateur I like to call this "the quest for balance".. You can see it in all kinds of behaviours. Like if someone is very buttoned-up and restraining themselves constantly in one part of their lives, they'll be the opposite of that in some other context (e.g home vs work) to maintain balance.

As a human, I like to think of this akin to how we walk/run/etc; eg, the act of Not Quite Falling Down.

“The Molecule of More” is a really good science based book on exactly that - drive, reward, and inhibition. I don’t know a better source that explains dopamine-and-friends in a more concise yet palatable way.

Would you recommend any literature?

I don't have any specific book on the topic. But you can find homeostasis in almost any scientific medical book. From 'principles of internal medicine', 'acquiring gnomes' or even the magnificent Sapolsky's 'why zebras dont get ulcers'. They all have chapters about homeostasis and the principles of balance in everything.

Beyond momentary balance, I wonder what the process of looking away and daydreaming for 3 minutes then resuming with an insight will look like once implemented somewhere. There’s some form of benefit. Turning off focused attention, the subconcious steals the ball and entertains the primary attention with a little unrelated circus, then passes back the ball with something new to the focused attention.

I find this even with activities that require novel dexterity. (e.g. learning something on piano, or something in leather/woodwork).

I get a bit better at them immediately, but that plateaus. (Often, I actually start to get worse at it, as I fatigue.)

On returning after a break I'm usually much better at it than my previous best.

I've noticed this with drums too. Trying out more complex things that required more coordination than I'd typically been able to use up to that point... I noticed that after taking a long break - like 6mo, between bands, etc - with me playing very little in between, I could then sit down and play the thing I couldn't before effortlessly.

I still don't understand it, but I'm here for it.

Yes, I noticed that doing finger agility exercises (on the piano) implies huge improvements for the day after, while very limited benefits for the same day.

Just noticing this exact phenomenon as a beginner learning wing foil: over two days, one day I can barely stand up, and only on one side, feeling very wobbly.

The very next day, I am easily standing up on both sides, and can pump (which involved jumping on the board and jerk-pulling the wing).

There was definitely something happened with my brain while I didn’t train.

This has been discussed in competitive videogames too. Usually people think that playing more and more is better, when actually having some days without playing is the best way to improve yourself.

One of my friends is a doctornspecialist in treating musicians. He told le once it is a well known phenomenon, and worst, if you practice too much without rest, you can damage your brain in a way that makes it difficult to progress later.

Control over default mode network

Just another manifestation of the edge of chaos.

Where's the edge?

The edge of chaos can be thought of as a zone in the ratio between parameters where evolution or optimization of a system (in this case, maximizing information processing) can occur with access to the most dynamics (needed to explore optimization space) without the system becoming unstable.

It's traditionally applied to order/disorder, but in this case the order and disorder are more abstract as the control mechanisms in question are the excitation or inhibition of a stimulus. Excitation and inhibition are a way of controlling the dynamics of the brain, and in general are two basic controls for maintaining stability in any embedded dynamic physical system, and according to the good regulator theorem[0], a perfect inhibition/excitation control system contains a perfect model of both the embedded system and its local environment, so even learning and understanding are rooted in these two basic ways of interacting with information, and thus we see the edge of chaos appear all over in biology, neuroscience and physics if you squint a bit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_regulator

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