In general, the neocortex processes knowledge and experience. First, you
gather knowledge in the form of facts or semantic information
(philosophical or theoretical concepts or ideas that you learn intellectually),
prompting the neocortex to add new synaptic connections and circuits.
Second, once you decide to personalize or apply knowledge you have
acquired—to demonstrate what you learned—you will invariably create a
new experience. This causes patterns of neurons called neural networks to
form in the neocortex. These networks reinforce the circuitry of what you
learned intellectually.
If the neocortex had a motto, it might be: Knowledge is for the mind.
Simply put, knowledge is the precursor to experience: Your neocortex is
responsible forprocessing ideas that you have not yet experienced, which
exist as a potential for you to embrace at some future time. As you entertain
new thoughts, you begin to think about modifying your behavior so that you
can do something differently when the opportunity presents itself, in order
to have a new outcome. As you then alter your routine actions and typical
behaviors, something different from the norm should happen, which will
produce a new event for you to experience.
From New Events to New Emotions: The Limbic Brain
Produces Chemicals to Help Us Remember Experiences
The limbic brain (also known as the mammalian brain), located under
the neocortex, is the most highly developed and specialized area of the
brain in mammals other than humans, dolphins, and higher primates. Just
think of the limbic brain as the “chemical brain” or the “emotional brain.”
When you’re in the midst of that new experience, and your senses send a
rush of corresponding information from the external world to your
neocortex, its neural networks organize themselves to reflect the event.
Thus, experience enriches the brain even further than new knowledge.
The moment those networks of neurons fire with a pattern specific to that
new experience, the emotional brain manufactures and releases chemicals
in the form of peptides. This chemical cocktail has a specific signature that
reflects the emotions you are experiencing in the moment. As you now
know, emotions are the end products of experience; a new experience