An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used in performing calculations for problem solving and decision making. In the last decades biologists came to the conclusion that the human being itself is a bioalgorithm. A highly sophisticated algorithm that controls 99% of human decisions and behaviour. The whole body is a computational machine that sends biochemical data to the brain, which processes it and performs calculations that, for the most part, are not conscious. These calculations are influenced by algorithms that we call sensations, emotions, thoughts and desires and produce a result that materialises in a behaviour or a decision.
These extremely powerful algorithms have been constantly evaluated and improved over millions of years of evolution. Only species that have a good algorithm for a given environment are guaranteed to survive and leave descendants.
In the first 3 years the brain goes from 400-500g at birth to 1000g at 3 years of age. There is enormous neuronal activity and the level of brain plasticity is very high because everything that relates us to the environment is new. In that period the number of synapses grows at an enormous rate. If the brain did not reduce this plasticity, it would respond to all the variations in the environment and would become a very noisy, problematic, functionally very costly and inaccurate brain. There is a “neuronal pruning” that is especially intense at early ages and where most neurons are lost. It follows the principle of “Use it or lose it”, what is not used, is eliminated and is a process modifiable by personal experiences.
The brain’s ability to strengthen the most used circuits and eliminate unused ones creates increasingly specific neural circuits that can anticipate and predict the relationship with the outside world. This allows more time to plan the response, to devise more accurate responses and to invent responses that may be better. This is a way of reducing energy expenditure and improving efficiency and effectiveness in response.
And here we encounter a paradox, because the repetition on which the most reliable predictive ability of the brain’s bioalgorithm to become more efficient and more effective is based on repetition. This reduces the brain’s overall development, which comes through neural stimulation, novelty. Adaptation makes you less adaptable.
Algorithms predict the future because when a pattern of behaviour is repeated, the tendency is to repeat it. In this reality, it is obvious that for algorithms to be most effective they must process a large amount of information from each individual, but they must also try to limit the level of entropy of that same individual. Hence the discomfort and fatigue of having to learn something new and the comfort and pleasure of something familiar and more predictable.
Every time we are going to move, the brain anticipates the muscles involved in the movement. All of this must adapt to a changing environment at very short intervals of time. It is not an organised sequential phenomenon that follows a constant pattern, it must be updated and reorganised at every instant. To predict such a chain of events, the brain stores in its memory the interoceptive and exteroceptive stimuli of the same or similar previous experiences that can help it to implement a rapid, efficient response with the minimum possible expenditure of energy. Although stored temporarily, if used repeatedly they can become permanent.
Specialisation is necessary to improve our responses and to reduce energy expenditure, but because it is not supported to the same extent by neural stimulation, it limits development. For most daily activities we need specialisation but only through stimulation is it possible to produce an increase in neural development so we must reserve space for the main factor that produces that stimulation, novelty.
The challenges of the vibrant stimulus of the unexpected, of novelty, challenge, variety and variability are fundamental to the development of the brain and our entire bioalgorithm. Neuroplasticity should be the focus in a neuroexercise programme and the concept of enriched exercise is fundamental to this.