{"id":223549,"date":"2025-10-16T23:22:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/a-flight-simulator-for-the-brain-reveals-how-we-learn-and-why-minds-sometimes-go-off-course"},"modified":"2025-10-16T23:22:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:22:45","slug":"a-flight-simulator-for-the-brain-reveals-how-we-learn-and-why-minds-sometimes-go-off-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/a-flight-simulator-for-the-brain-reveals-how-we-learn-and-why-minds-sometimes-go-off-course","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018flight simulator\u2019 for the brain reveals how we learn\u2014and why minds sometimes go off course"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-flight-simulator-for-the-brain-reveals-how-we-learn-and-why-minds-sometimes-go-off-course.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Every day, your brain makes thousands of decisions under uncertainty. Most of the time, you guess right. When you don\u2019t, you learn. But when the brain\u2019s ability to judge context or assign meaning falters, thoughts and behavior can go astray. In psychiatric disorders ranging from attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder to schizophrenia, the brain may misjudge how much evidence to gather before acting\u2014or fail to adjust when the rules of the world change based on new information.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUncertainty is built into the brain\u2019s wiring,\u201d says Michael Halassa, a professor of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine. \u201cPicture groups of neurons casting votes\u2014some optimistic, some pessimistic. Your decisions reflect the average.\u201d When that balance skews, the brain can misread the world: assigning too much meaning to random events, as in <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2024-11-people-schizophrenia-distinct-brain-conflicting.html\">schizophrenia<\/a>, or becoming stuck in rigid patterns, as in obsessive-compulsive disorder.<\/p>\n<p>Understanding those misfires has long challenged scientists, says Halassa. \u201cThe brain speaks the language of single neurons. But fMRI\u2014the tool we use to study brain activity in people\u2014tracks blood flow, not the electrical chatter of individual brain cells.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every day, your brain makes thousands of decisions under uncertainty. Most of the time, you guess right. When you don\u2019t, you learn. But when the brain\u2019s ability to judge context or assign meaning falters, thoughts and behavior can go astray. In psychiatric disorders ranging from attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder to schizophrenia, the brain may misjudge how much [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}