How we act and react
How we act and react — our behaviour — is the outcome of:
- a stimulus: an event, or our perception of it
- our neurology: what happens in our brain
- our psychology: what goes on in our mind.
Where behaviour comes from
Some behaviour is inherited.
Much is learned early, from parents and the people around us.
And more is learned, and can be relearned, through our own experience.
Neurons (brain cells)
Our brain has around 86 billion neurons (brain cells).
Neurons carry electrical signals around the brain and nervous system.
Synapses connect brain cells
Neurons pass signals to each other across tiny gaps called synapses, using chemical messengers called neurotransmitters.
Neural pathways and behaviour imprinting
Neurons pass the signal along the line, via the synapses, to tell us what to think about and how to act or react.
And when we repeat a pattern, the behaviour is hard-coded into the brain as a neural pathway. (Read more: Hebb’s Law — neurons that fire together, wire together.)
Hardwiring behaviour
These pathways contain our behaviour instructions — how to act and react when a stimulus arrives.
So the next time we face the same or a similar event or environment, we act again in the same hard-wired way.
This pattern repetition is how David Beckham perfected his free kicks, and how others develop their patterns.
It’s also how you develop and reinforce your own healthy and unhealthy patterns.
The limbic system
Brain scans show where activity along these pathways is most intense: the limbic system. It is this region of the brain that ultimately shapes how we act and react.
Its central location means that everything we see, hear, taste, touch and smell goes into it first. It’s also where memory is managed, where emotional responses are housed, and it has significant control of the nervous system.
In a 3D model of the limbic system, printed from an MRI scan (see how to print your own):
- the central part is our central processing unit, which receives all incoming senses
- the flat section at the bottom manages memory — what to remember, and how to recall it
- the amygdala houses our fear-based emotions. If you have a temper, this is the button people often press
- a pathway connects the amygdala to the hypothalamus, which triggers hormone release.
This collection of neurons plays a huge part in our behaviour. It tells the rest of the brain — and in turn the body — what to concentrate on, what to think about, and whether to act or react.
It largely determines our own behaviour, and other people’s. Understanding this structure is at the heart of the work I do.
Changing a pattern
Patterns that were learned can be relearned. That is the work I do in therapy and coaching.
If human behaviour interests you, my essays explore it further. If there are behaviours you’d like to change, Contact