These 7 Starters form the base of the ApproachAvoid.com Mapping and Consulting Services.  As we try to improve moments and experiences, we need to put attention towards the human subconscious.  These 7 Starters help us obtain that focus and energy where a person makes an Approach/Avoid decision.  

As we begin, let's get into the mindset of Approach - Avoid.  Humans, like all other species on planet Earth, spend all day, every day approaching and avoiding.  We approach and avoid people, places, ideas, products, services, organizations, brands, pain, pleasure, feelings, and a whole lot more.  As you reflect on your organization, get into the mindset that everything revolves around approach-avoid.  Employees approach by coming to work and choose one path each day - employees avoid by leaving your organization.  Customers approach by purchasing the goods and services your organization provides - customers avoid when they do not purchase your goods and services.  Success for individuals, organizations, and society is built on the management of approach-avoid actions.  

To survive, all animals, ranging from amoeba to humans, must approach and avoid certain situations, objects, and possibilities. (1)

All organisms are hard-wired or preprogrammed to make immediate approach-avoidance responses to particular inputs/stimuli. (1)

The information/research available on Approach/Avoid is beyond a single website.  Since the focus is on improving moments and experiences along with adapting to change,  this site will contain content that serves these purposes.  There are links on the next page for those who want to explore and learn more about human approach - avoid behavior.  Click here to for those links.

We spend all day Approaching and Avoiding to survive.  

The keys to physical survival include food, water, air, shelter, sleep, and keeping oneself and loved ones healthy and safe.  

For cultural survival, we want to belong and feel respected within our community/in-group and have solid self-esteem to make it through each day.  

With good mapping, we can help others improve their perception of safety for both physical and cultural survival.  This will increase customer and employee approach towards your organization.  We can also map and constantly learn what is causing the avoidance of your organization.  

A quote from the Handbook of Approach and Avoid:

"Survival is the primary motivation for living organisms.." (1)

DO:   Since survival is the primary motivation, this should be a top choice in Mapping human behavior along with their approach and avoid actions.  We use constant Approach/Avoid to both physically survive and to survive within our specific cultures.  Over human history, these two were vitally linked.  Physical survival was a bigger challenge which made cultural survival (living in a community of support - not getting kicked out or abandoned) extremely important.  The constant life and death decisions of these two historically continue to impact our current lives today.  Observe how important it is for humans to have support and be part of a group.

Mapping Focus

Our goal is to have a map for both Physical and Cultural Survival.  Like Approach-Avoid, all day and every day people are trying to survive.  Although physical and cultural survival intertwines, we like to separate them on maps to explore their differences and to improve results.  Survival can be a part of any larger map or it can be set up as an individual Survival Map that focuses on how major touchpoints can be improved by exploring Approach/Avoid with survival.  

A person needs to know what is "out there" to survive.  By receiving the inputs through the five senses, humans can survive by gathering what is useful.     

"The human brain is trapped in its own dark silent box called a skull.  The brain has no knowledge of what is going on around it in the world or in the body because it is stuck in this skull.  It is receiving sensory signals from the sensory surfaces of our bodies.  These signals are the outcomes of some changes in the world or within the body.  The brain doesn't know what the changes are of these outcome changes."  (The brain has to guess - next section).  

Thanks to Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett for the above metaphor.  In a quick way, it explains in a Detached Observation way what is happening with the human brain every minute of every day.  It also shines a light on how important perception is.  Lastly, this is done in the subconscious and it is done so fast.  Approach and Avoid decisions are made from the inputs at the 5 senses.

The data from the 5 senses does not come in with meaning.  

> Light Waves

> Chemicals

> Changes in Air Pressure

The human brain needs to figure these out quickly!,  

With limited data, the brain has to put the story together without all the pieces.  

Some examples from a customer perspective can include:

- Should I try this new product?  

- Is the price fair for this product/service? 

- Will this investment of my time/money be a good use of my resources? 

- Is this employee useful to me?

The brain receives vital clues about the outside world through the senses.    

DO:  When taking a satellite view of humans and their senses, here are a few points:

- Humans have acquired and have senses that give access to what is USEFUL for them.  The other species on the planet have senses that are Useful for their survival - a dog has what is useful to them or an elephant to them and so on - (Below we highlight species that are at the top of the hierarchy for the 5 senses). 

- Humans do not see the world as it truly is.  We cannot hear, see, or smell everything.  We only get a slice of it.

- Survival is key.  Physical and Cultural.  

- Negative and Avoid are more Important.  Rather be safe than sorry.  Sorry can mean that a wrong decision and life is over.  Safety is key and it is prioritized.

- Approach to one or multiple senses has to be worth moving towards  

The 5 Senses

Below you will find the 5 senses and a few reasons for their existence.  Also included are species that have top-notch senses.  It helps us to reflect on how humans have what is Useful to us to survive and thrive.  

SIGHT

Detect different wavelengths of light (that are Useful to us)

Detect Movement

Detect Predators, Prey, and Resources

Express Emotions to others

Facial Recognition

Find Mates

Navigate Surroundings

Notice Threats and Opportunities

Parental Care

Pattern Recognition

See Differences 

Situation Awareness

Use to build tools

Additional information on Sight:

Humans enjoy one of nature’s most versatile senses of sight, thanks to the four types of photoreceptors in our retina: rods are very sensitive to light - giving us reasonable night vision.  We also have three different types of cones, which divide the wavelengths of visible light.

The record number of photoreceptors in the animal world is held by the common Bluebottle Butterfly (with 15 types) and by the Peacock Mantis Shrimp (with 12-16 types).  

As neurons change conversation partners, a single neuron can take on different roles.  As an example, the ability to see is so intimately tied to an area of the brain called the occipital cortex that the area is routinely called the visual cortex.  Its neurons routinely carry information about hearing and touch.  If you blindfold a person with a typical vision for a few days and teach them to read braille, neurons in their visual cortex become more devoted to the sense of touch. (3)

SOUND

Communicate and Social Interactions

Detect auditory cues of the surrounding environment

Detect Threats, Danger, and Opportunities

Find Resources

Navigate and Spatial Awareness

Parental Care

Recognition of Events and Objects

When sight is limited, can help navigate

Vigilance when sleeping to be awaken

Humans also have a pretty decent sense of hearing compared to other species:  audible range - between about 20 and 20,000 hertz.  

Animals with specialized hearing - such as dolphins or bats - can reach frequencies of up to 100,000 hertz. The record is held by another animal, the Greater Wax Moth - It can reach up to 300,000 hertz. 

TOUCH

Alleviate Pain and Provide Comfort

Communication of Emotions

Convey Dominance in Social Hierarchies

Detect Danger and Threats

Exploration and Learning

Parental Care

Quick and Effective Alerting Mechanism 

Social Bonding and Connection

Thermoregulation

Tool Use

The Star Nosed Mole (Condylura cristata) is the record holder for the sense of touch, with its peculiar nasal appendages crammed with mechanoreceptors that give it six times the sensitivity of the human hand, our most sensitive area, but it can also sniff out food underwater. To do this, it exhales small air bubbles that it keeps attached to its nose and which are impregnated with odorous stimuli from the water, which it then inhales back into its nasal mucosa. 

TASTE

Appetite Regulation

Detection of spoiled and rotten foods

Identifying important nutrients in food

Maintain balance in diet 

Social and Cultural tastes

The ability of humans to taste is limited to the tongue, which houses our taste buds.  Humans have approx. 10,000 taste receptors.

Catfish have taste receptors scattered all over their bodies—although more concentrated on their chins or the whiskers around their mouths—allowing them to locate their prey in the muddy, murky waters in which they live. Compared to our taste receptors, the largest catfish can have as many as 175,000 taste receptors.    

SMELL

Detect Chemical Signals - Threats, Dangers, and Opportunities

Detection of Food Resources

Finding Potential Mates

Identification of Spoiled and Rotten Foods

Memory

Predatory Detection

Recognition of Familiar Smells and Individuals

Recognizing Personal Items

The size of the human repertoire of odor-receptor genes can even outperform dogs in detecting certain odors, such as those found in bananas, urine, or human blood. 

Dogs noses are far superior to us humans (their sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times better).  Dogs can follow scent trails for kilometers in the same way that we can follow a line on the ground.  Lastly, dogs are outperformed by horses, mice, cows, rats, and bears.

According to the US National Park Service (NPS), the black bear has a nasal mucosa 100 times larger than ours, and its sense of smell is seven times that of a beagle. It can smell food from several kilometers away. “With 300 to 500 bears roaming Yosemite at any given time, it’s more than likely that at least one of them is smelling you at all times,” says the NPS. Its larger cousin, the polar bear, is said to be able to smell a seal from 32 kilometers away, and from almost a kilometer away it can smell the hole in the ice through which a submerged seal is breathing.

The elephant is the olfactory champion. With 1,948 receptor genes, it more than doubles the 811 of dogs. 

Mapping Focus

Ideally, we would want a spot for each of the 5 senses for mapping purposes.  If space is limited, it can be reduced to just perception.  Having a place for each of the 5 senses allows the freedom to explore ideas on how to enhance the human experience by engaging multiple senses.  Every person has their own worldview/perception.  This is important to consider when constructing a map.

Making decisions quickly is vital for survival.  To increase the chance of survival, the brain predicts.  

Here is another good summary from Lisa Barrett:

"Your brain is predictive, not reactive. For many years, scientists believed that your neurons spend most of their time dormant and wake up only when stimulated by some sight or sound in the world. Now we know that all your neurons are firing constantly, stimulating one another at various rates. This intrinsic brain activity is one of the great recent discoveries in neuroscience. Even more compelling is what this brain activity represents: millions of predictions of what you will encounter next in the world, based on your lifetime of past experience."

(5)

To make sense of the light, smells, and noises hitting the senses, the brain relies on past experiences.  Otherwise, that loud bang could be a number of things.  The brain seeks/needs to get it right to protect the health and safety of the individual.    

Mapping Focus

Being wrong about predicting outcomes sets in motion memories of future approach - avoid.  Each of the 7 Starters is important to have on a map - either together or focused individually.  Mapping Predictions at the major touchpoints is vital to understanding and improving moments that can make or break a customer relationship.  By learning and improving the predictions customers have that come to their senses, your organization can reduce the prediction errors that cause a negative emotion (a moment that is now being burned into memory) that will dramatically impact future approach.  Also, if the prediction is really off, that person can become so angry that they will use their energy to tell others to avoid your organization.

Because the brain has so many inputs (touchpoints) and predictions, for our mapping we will focus on the most important touchpoints at your organization.

Memory is important for physical and cultural survival.  We approach and avoid based on past experiences to approach positive inputs and avoid negative ones.  

DO:  Let's use two examples of how past experiences can help us survive.  We will use physical survival in the first example and cultural survival  in the second.  

Imagine back in human history a person going on a hunt.  Time is of the essence as getting food every day was important.  This person needs to go through a wooded area every day to find food for the day.  Memory and Past Experiences will increase this persons chance of survival because within the past, they have learned where the poisonous plants are, the quickest path, and where dangerous animals are likely to be.  Without past experiences and memory, this person would be going out blind every day and "figuring it out" on the fly.   Past experiences and memory bring meaning to the inputs from our senses and help us do better approach/avoid decisions.

In a second example from today, technology is important in jobs and within our social circles.  Imagine having a phone in your pocket but having no memory each time you pull it out with no past experiences.  You would need to seek help every time and each learning cycle would be long and difficult because you have no memory and past experiences.  Holding a job and moving up the social hierarchy would be quite difficult.  

Humans need memory and past experiences to constantly survive.  

Mapping Focus

We like to use a dark color to represent Past Experiences on our maps.  This is because individual past experiences are dark to us and we need to bring light and focused energy to learn and understand how another person is interpreting their world (Survival, Safety, and Predictions).  We as individuals will make decisions that are deep in the subconscious that relate to past experiences.  Communication, feedback, and engaging with others are strategies to better understand the Approach-Avoid behavior in others.

When we make predictions to the inputs we are getting, we need to learn if the prediction is correct.  

Emotion can be thought of as the process by which a human brain computes the value of a stimulus for the purpose of responding adaptively. (2)

"...emotions can be usefully construed as survival-based dispositions to action..." (2)

Emotion is built on basic motivational circuits that have evolved to sustain life.

DO:  Emotions are used to survive.  For both physical survival and within the culture.  Did our brain make the right prediction.  We NEED to learn if it did.  Yes, that whole survival thing is part of this as well.  

Mapping Focus

Each person has their own emotions to learn the world around them.  Learning the strength of emotions in others can help us improve moments and experiences.  Strong Approach or Avoid emotions from a current experience builds a memory/experience that teaches us the likelihood of future approach and avoid decisions.  Along with mapping emotions, we feel it is vital that an organization have an avenue where a person can express their frustration (prediction error).  

It is metabolically costly for a brain to deal with things that are hard to predict.  

DO:  The cost is different for each person.  One person may subconsciously say Yes, I will learn about you even though you are different than me.  Another person, without knowing why, will not want to learn about a person different from them.  (3)

Additional DO:  Each one of us has our own level of 'energy' we will use to approach/avoid.  One person may be curious to try something new and another person does not choose to extend additional energy and will stick with their routine in life.    

We hear the term "Quick Wins" in the service field.  A quick win is where an organization takes a quick step to improve service and provide a win for both the organization and the customer.  Improvements on how a person uses their energy with an organization can provide quick wins.

A few examples of how mapping moments and experiences for better customer energy use can include:

- Improve navigation speed for physical and digital touchpoints (ex- Finding products in the store or navigating a website quicker)

- Having a quick way where customers can get help when needed

- Respecting the time of a person and using better time management perception in cases where one cannot reduce waiting time

- Having better knowledge of a person's objective can provide clues on how to reduce unnecessary energy use

Mapping Focus

The proper use of energy is key for survival.  Time and energy are limited for all of us.  Individual energy varies with each person and that particular energy can vary throughout each day due to circumstances.  Time and energy management are crucial to improving Moments, Experiences, and Results.  This importance will increase as individuals continue to take on additional inputs.  

The final 7 Starter is Action.  After all the inputs, predictions, and emotions, a person takes action.  This is the Approach or Avoid that a person's subconscious and consciousness decides to do.  Our society is built on this.  An organization's or an individual's success is determined by their approach/actions - the decisions that they have made.  

Let's summarize Starters 1- 7:

Mapping Physical and Cultural Survival will help your organization improve ways to help a person survive and thrive in an uncertain world

Mapping Human Perception will allow your organization to improve touchpoints to induce more approach and reduce avoid where a person's subconscious is receiving these inputs

Mapping Brain Predictions allows your organization to learn and improve ways to match and exceed these predictions

Mapping Memory/Past Experiences will allow your organization to have more ways to "learn" more about the darkness of a person's past experiences that lead to their brain prediction at an important touchpoint.  

Mapping Emotions will help your organization feel how another person interpreted their experience with your organization on what memories can be going forward that will induce either more approach or increase the chance of avoid with your organization.

Mapping Energy will help you find spots for quick wins to improve a person's energy use with your organization.

Lastly, mapping Actions will show you the results of your organization's work to improve 1 - 6. 

Mapping Focus

Having Actions on a map is important to understand the subconscious decisions of others.  The better we understand Actions the higher likelihood we will improve Results.  Incorporate the Actions of others to monitor the effectiveness of your designed improvements.  People can 'like' your organization all day long.  However, it is their Actions that decide your survival.  

Let's explore the Mapping Services!

1.  SURVIVAL

Below you will find a few links to research in the area of Survival

Research in Physical Survival:

The ecology of human fear:  survival optimization and the nervous system  National Library of Medicine  

Proposes from the article 

The goal of the nervous system is to reduce surprise and optimize actions by:

1.  Predicting sensory landscape and selecting pre-encounter action

2.  Prevention strategies and manufacturing safe environments

3.  When a threat is encountered, the threat-orienting system is engaged to determine if to ignore it

4.  Monitors threat, determines threat value, predicts actions of the threat, and seeks safety

5.  When under attack, defensive systems evoke fast escape behaviors (fight or flight)

How your brain reacts to threats  Psychology Today

Carrots and Sticks

"But here’s the key difference between carrots and sticks: If you miss out on a carrot today, you’ll probably have a chance at more carrots tomorrow. But if you fail to avoid a stick today – WHAP! – no more carrots forever. Compared to carrots, sticks usually have more urgency and impact."

"your body generally reacts more intensely to negative stimuli than to equally strong positive ones"

"In your brain, negative stimuli produce more neural activity than do equally intense (e.g., loud, bright) positive ones. They are also perceived more easily and quickly"  

DO:  The Human Brain is on alert for negative and threatening inputs.  

Lesson:  If you have 10 apples of energy a day and your objective is to be alive at the end of it, where would you put your apples of energy?  It makes sense that we as humans focus on negative over positive.  As an example, why does our society have so many negative stories in the news compared to positive ones?  Our brains have to be focused on them.  Thus, they get more views, more views equal more advertising revenue, and more coverage.  

Understanding the stress response  Harvard Medical School Publishing

"When someone experiences a stressful event, the amygdala, an area of the brain that contributes to emotional processing, sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. This area of the brain functions like a command center, communicating with the rest of the body through the nervous system so that the person has the energy to fight or flee."

"After the amygdala sends a distress signal, the hypothalamus activates the sympathetic nervous system by sending signals through the autonomic nerves to the adrenal glands."  

"All of these changes happen so quickly that people aren't aware of them. In fact, the wiring is so efficient that the amygdala and hypothalamus start this cascade even before the brain's visual centers have had a chance to fully process what is happening."

Research in Cultural Survival:

Humans are social.  Throughout human history, if you were kicked out of the tribe, your chances of physically surviving were drastically reduced.  Cultural survival is so important.  You will see research throughout this site that will emphasize this.

Verbal insults trigger a "mini slap to the face", finds new research     Frontiers

"Humans are a highly social species. We rely on ever-changing cooperation dynamics and interpersonal relations to survive and thrive. Words have a big role to play in these relations, as they are tools used to understand interpersonal behavior." 

"The researchers found that even under unnatural conditions — a lab-setting, no real human interactions, and statements coming from fictitious people — verbal insults can still “get at you”, no matter who the insult is about, and continue to do so even after repetition."

"...the results show an increased sensitivity of our brains to negative words compared to positive words. An insult immediately captures our brain's attention, as the emotional meaning of insults is retrieved from long-term memory."

Mixing the Two:  Physical and Cultural Survival

Work by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski.

From their book:  "The Worm at the Core" - On the Role of Death in Life.  Below you will find notes along with Detached Observation for Approach - Avoid.

Humans manage the problem of knowing we are mortal by calling on two basic psychological resources.  1 - We need to sustain faith in our cultural worldview, which helps with our sense of reality with order, meaning, and permanence.

2 - The second vital resource for managing terror is a feeling of personal significance, commonly known as self-esteem.  

The way we humans seek the above two varies considerably across all of us.

Reminders of death provoke more negative reactions to those who fail to live up to our values.  They also spawn more positive responses to people who uphold them.  In one study, death reminders tripled the monetary reward people recommended for someone who reported a dangerous criminal to the police.

Concerns about mortality influence everything from the mundane to the momentous - Examples include:

What we eat for lunch

How much sunscreen we put on at the beach

Who we vote for

Our attitudes toward shopping

Our mental health and physical well-being

Who we like and dislike

DO:  In their work and many studies, they show how the human brain goes into safety mode when the expression of death is brought up to both the subconscious and conscious.  The studies also show how the impact on behavior can be all done without the knowledge of the individual and they are not able to explain why they did what they did.  The studies also reveal that it is not just physical death threats that influence behavior (Politicians know this work - A lot of advertising dollars are spent trying to convince voters that their culture is dying and the outgroup is responsible)

An example of how the human brain mixes Physical Survival and Cultural Survival:

INSULAR CORTEX - 

DO   The insular cortex does both moral and gustatory disgust.  Here is a link to a YouTube Video of Robert Sapolsky discussing this:

LINK TO VIDEO

Reminder, so much of the disgust at the insular cortex is beyond our awareness

It is highlighted here as an example of how the insular cortex manages disgust at the physical survival level (eating bad food) and cultural survival (bad morale behavior of others).

Lesson:  Try perspective taking on your insular cortex in terms of disgust.  The next time you find something disgusting (whether it be bad food, a spider, a bug at a restaurant, someone does something you find offensive, someone saying something inappropriate, etc.), imagine your insular cortex lighting up to protect you.  Now try to imagine someone else in similar circumstances.  Perspective take on their brains becoming disgusted on bad food or an outgroup member saying something that is disgusting to them.  If you are in the business of designing experiences for others, this lesson will be helpful to improve your work - Manage Physical and Morale Disgust in human experiences to Reduce Avoidance.  

DO:  Negative hits to human self-esteem or status impacts human survival.  How people handle these threats and insults varies depending on brain structure and past experiences.  As seen within the Insular Cortex, Physical and Cultural impacts and survival within the human brain can be intertwined.  Powerful information to reflect on.

Summary:  Like Approach Avoid, we recommend thinking more in terms of how another person is attempting to Survive both Physically and within their Culture.  The Sales Process, the Customer Experience, the Employee Experience.... Everything is about Surviving and Thriving.  Helping others Survive will help you and your organization raise the bar. 

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2.  HUMAN PERCEPTION

Senses Research:

"How Odors Influence Brain's Decision-Making Mechanism"

"Researchers have uncovered a novel function of the hippocampus in decision making, showing that specific brain cells, known as ‘time cells,’ are stimulated by odors to facilitate rapid ‘go, no-go’ decisions."

"By tracking the activation of these cells in response to scents, the team has revealed a direct link between odor, hippocampal function, and associative learning, suggesting that these cells play a crucial role beyond memory recall, directly influencing the brain’s decision-making process." 

"The catalyst for the decision-making is the odor which travels up the nose sending neural signals to the olfactory bulb and to the hippocampus. The two organs are closely connected. The information is swiftly processed and the brain makes a decision based on the input."

Along with projecting to the the amygdala and entorhinal cortex, olfactory also impacts and sends significant projections back to the olfactory bulb and piriform cortex.  This reciprocal feedforward and feedback system can permit experience, context, and behavioral state to modulate odor processing as early as the second-order neurons.  There is the anatomical triangulation with limbic and neocortical structures - these odor objects can include and evoke strong multimodal, emotional, and memory-rich perceptions.  (2)

The olfactory bulb directly sends odor information to brain areas critical in emotional and cognitive processing of orders, such as the piriform "olfactory" cortex and the amygdala.  The locus coeruleus (LC) projects to the olfactory bulb and is the bulb's sole source of norepinephrine (NE). (2)

DO:  So much work the brain does on capturing inputs from the 5 senses is beyond human consciousness.  Humans will Approach and Avoid with no idea as to why they are doing what they're doing.  To survive, a brain also needs to remember inputs for future use.   

The role of odors in controlling social behavior is reflected in the olfactory bulb's direct projection to brain areas important for cognition and emotional processing, which modulate approach and avoidance behaviors. (2)

Lesson:  The next time you go out to a restaurant (you can also perspective take on someone doing this or your last past experience), use your imagination to reflect on how your 5 senses were in play during this experience.  

Sight:  Was the restaurant and restrooms clean>  Did it have order?  How was spacing and navigation?  Were people friendly?   Did the food look appetizing?

Sound:  Was there music playing?  Did the music provoke memories (positive or negative)?  Was it too loud?  What was the tone of voice of employees who spoke to you?

Taste:  Did the food taste good?  Is it what you were expecting?

Touch:  How did the menus feel?  How about the entrance doors?  Did you shake anybody's hand?  Did anybody touch you on the shoulder?

Smell:  Did you like the smells from the restaurant?  Do you recall anything that would make you approach or avoid this restaurant in terms of smell?  Perspective take on what kind of smells a brain would need to approach or avoid this place in the future.

Now that we covered the five senses and how a human brain learns what is "out there", how does a brain work to Approach or Avoid these inputs?  

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3.  BRAIN PREDICTIONS

Brain Prediction Research

"The brain is a prediction machine:  It knows how well we are doing something before we even try" 

"The brain is a prediction machine.  It is always trying to predict what is going to happen next so that we are ready for whatever life throws at us"

"A brain activity pattern in the anterior lateral prefrontal cortex tracks this estimate of how well we are likely to do." 

Lesson:  Reflect over the last few weeks on the events that you found to be surprisingly positive and those that were negative and you became disappointed.  Then perspective take on how your brain predicted those events.  

Using detached observation, reflect on how your brain used past experiences to predict events correctly.  

Lastly, now reflect on how powerful the human brain can be.  How many predictions occur when a person is driving a vehicle at higher speeds in busy traffic?  A professional baseball player hitting a 100mph fastball.  

How does a brain learn to predict better?  Let's discuss Memory - Past Experiences... 

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4.  PAST EXPERIENCES

Research into Memory and Past Experiences

Here is a Quick Read on Memory from Harvard University:

How Memory Works

What happens when our brains make errors in predicting inputs?  Let's explore Emotions...

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5.  EMOTIONS

Research into Emotions

Information from "How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett

The human face contains 42 small muscles on each side.

Fear does not have a single expression but a diverse population of facial movements.    These vary from different situations.

Important note:

Variation is the norm - Emotion fingerprints are a myth.

Ex.  Anger>  Does not refer to a specific response with a unique physical fingerprint but to a group of highly variable instances that are tied to a specific situation.

Pattern classification:

Neural mind reading

Experiential Blindness

Past experiences give meaning to current sensations.

Simulations - A brains guess of what's happening in the world.

Concepts - Every moment the brain uses concepts to simulate the outside world.  The human brain uses concepts to give meaning to both internal and external sensations.

EMOTION  >  A brain's creation of what bodily sensations mean.

Emotions are not reactions to the world.  From sensory input and past experiences, the human brain constructs meaning and prescribes action.

Cultures can and do make different kinds of meanings from the same sensory input.

Lesson:  Anger, Sadness, Joy, Excitement, and every intense emotion you feel.  Reflect on what the brain was learning when you experienced these emotions in the past.   Now walk through how your brain got angry at something and did not do that action again.  

There are too many inputs in the world - There is too much information.

We can only be in one physical space at a time.  What is an important aspect on how the brain will Approach or Avoid inputs?

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6.  ENERGY

ARTICLES

We finally know why the brain uses so much energy  Live Science

"The study researchers found that tiny sacs called vesicles that hold messages being transmitted between brain cells may be constantly oozing energy and that leakage is likely a trade-off for the brain being ready to fire at all times, according to a new study"

"The brain is considered a very expensive organ to run"

"Just imagine how quickly you can accelerate if you had a car idling at all times at a high rev rate, but how much fuel you'd waste, he added. "Maybe the price of keeping synapses at the ready was what seems to be an inefficient use of energy." 

Paying the brain's energy bill  Science Direct

"The brain is metabolically expensive. In humans, the brain consumes approximately 20% of our metabolic energy, despite comprising only 2% of our body mass, making it amongst the most energetically costly organs in the body"

"Energy trade-offs are also required to support the operational costs of the brain, which are not constant across the lifespan. Learning and memory formation, for example, incurs significant energy costs..."

"Accumulating evidence indicates that the brain operates energetically efficiently, enabling it to operate with reduced energy use. Thus, whilst the brain is metabolically expensive, its cost reflects a lower bound required for function. A sizeable fraction of the brain's energy expenses are used to support electrical signaling"  

Conclusion

1.  "peripheral tissue and functions have been sacrificed to support the metabolic need of the brain"

2.  "the brain has evolved energy-efficient coding strategies to operate at reduced cost."

3.  "the brain efficiently uses costly neural resources during food scarcity; this requires both a decrease in energy expenditure of non-essential neural functions, and a selective enhancement of useful neural functions to maximize the chances of finding food and water in times of need."

The last of the 7 Starters is what we do with the inputs we have received.  Since the human is dark to us, this next starter is the decision our brains made...

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7.  ACTIONS

DO:  The world is built on the actions of all the characters in it.  As humans, we can think and say various things.  However, it is our actions that show the world the final decision we have made at each moment.  

Mapping:  For mapping moments and experiences, actions show us if our maps are successful.  As an example, a potential customer can think you have great product or service, however, if they never take action, there is no sale.  

Action and Goal Pursuit

Here is some information to share on Goal Pursuit:

Hierarchical brain networks active in approach and avoidance goal pursuit