Our Brains Tell Stories So We Can Live

Unravel the fascinating intricacies of the human mind as we delve into the narrative power of our brains. Discover how our cerebral storytelling shapes our existence, influences our perceptions, and ultimately, crafts the reality we inhabit.

Storytelling and Science

Science is an objective collection and interpretation of data.

• But when we use data of the physical world to explain phenomena that cannot be reduced to physical facts, or when we extend incomplete data to draw general conclusions, we are telling stories
• Despite the verities of science, many of our most important questions compel us to tell stories that venture beyond the facts

Syndromes are stories in search of underlying causes

The 2013 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome from its guidebook for clinicians, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-V), for failing to conform to any specific neuropathology underscores the all-too-common problem of accepting a clustering of symptoms as synonymous with a specific disease.

• Brain scans that reveal abnormalities in mass murderers may help us understand what might have contributed to their behavior. But abnormalities are no more the sole explanation for violence than childhood neglect or poor nutrition are.

Unlocking Mom’s Brain

No Two Human Brains Are Alike

• The uniqueness of each mind is written in its ever-changing circuitry
• “I Have to Admit, I Have a Very Low Opinion of Human Beings”. Why the father of neuroscience, toward the end of his career, preferred to study ants.

The Pleasurable Feeling

The pleasurable feeling that our explanation is the right one-ranging from a modest sense of familiarity to the powerful and sublime “a-ha!”-is meted out by the same reward system in the brain integral to drug, alcohol, and gambling addictions. The reward system extends from the limbic area of the brain, vital to the expression of emotion, to the prefrontal cortex, critical to executive thought.

• Key to the system, and found primarily within its brain cells, is dopamine, a neurotransmitter that carries and modulates signals among brain cells. Studies consistently show that feeling rewarded is accompanied by a rise in dopamine levels.

Problem: We can get our dopamine reward, and walk away with a story in hand, before science has finished testing it

Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them

• Just as proper pattern recognition results in the reward of an increased release of dopamine, faulty pattern recognition is associated with decreased dopamine release
• In monkeys, the failure to make a successful prediction characteristically diminishes dopamine release just as the predicted event is anticipated but fails to occur

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