📚 node [[whole mind]]

For many years we thought of the brain as having two parts, the left brain and the right brain. The left brain was thought to be our analytical brain, the right brain our creative brain.

The only problem is that this model is wrong.

When neuroscientists could begin to explore the brain activity using a functional MRI (fMRI)], they began to recognize that a more complex dynamic was going on.

They identified that parts of our brain were lit up by different networks that are functioning within a complex neural web called the connectome.

One network is called our [[Default Mode Network]] - our primal network that has been key to our survival in the wild. Then there is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions Executive Network], that has been developed to allow us to think analytically.

But then they found another network, called the [[Salience Network]], that is activated to find meaning in things that are contrasting. Perhaps the spatial, non-linear thinking that we experience through hypertext utilizes this network.

Researchers from Harvard [https://www.pnas.org/content/115/5/1087 recently discovered] that the more fully we activate all three of these networks, the better we can creatively solve complex problems by [[Cultivating Connectome]].

Our current understanding of the mind is also being shaped by famed neuroscientist, Karl Friston, who has developed a groundbreaking model called the [[Free Energy Principle]].

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