A Model of the Mind

This model is the product of a lifetime of interest and study of how the brain and the mind work. In college and grad school I studied Psychology. During that time Dr. Harry Bahrick, professor of Experimental Psychology at Ohio Wesleyan University, was pioneering research in information theory. Man is an information processing machine. When we are thinking, we are processing information. This may seem like a simple statement, but really, it is astounding. How is it that we think??? And how does this happen in our small brain, about the size of a grapefruit?!!

Visual of grapefruit

By a happy timely coincidence I came across a theory by Donald Hebb, a Canadian neuroscientist, that accounts for how the brain does this information processing. He proposed that our experiences are recorded in our brain in the form of neuron cell assemblies (which are networks of neurons.) This happens as a result of information being transmitted (from the senses) to the neurons in our brain. Basically his theory was that when one neuron transmits an impulse to another neuron a linkage is strengthened at their connection. So that the next time the first neuron is active it will more likely transmit its impulse to the next neuron. Interestingly, a similar process occurs in the programming of computers.

Visual cell assembly

This becomes very important when we consider what happens in our brain when we think the same thoughts over and over again. Those linkages become wired in. We will come back to this topic later. When these “linkages” occur we are forming pathways in our computer/brain. These pathways are our programs. The “data bank” in our computer/brain consists of the way these neurons have become linked to each other.

Visual of cell assembly progam

When we see a “tree” for instance, the visual input from the tree activates those nerves that were previously established as “tree” from our previous experiences of “tree”. The electrical/chemical activity that occurs as the neurons activate each other is our thoughts. Hebb proposed the idea of a “reverberating circuit”: as these neurons activate and re-activate each other we can hold a thought for more than just a moment. These reverberating circuits are the key to how we can focus on an idea, and how a stream of these ideas become our stream of consciousness. This is how our knowledge, memory and experiences are stored. This is how we think!

Visual cell assembly reverberating circuit

This was the beginning of the computer age, and the combination of information theory with Hebb’s theory made for a neat psychology major thesis about the mind: it works like a computer! Subsequent discoveries have further confirmed Hebb’s early ideas, and I integrated them into my research. Neurons do indeed change at their interconnections when they transmit impulses. Programming does take place in our brains.

Yet it seems like we have a whole universe of these thoughts and ideas. If these are programs, how can we carry them all in our brain? How can there be enough room for all these programs?

Actually, we really have two brains, interconnected, and the size of our brain is deceiving. Current estimates are that each hemisphere of our brain contains fifty to a hundred billion neurons. Some years ago, while writing The Psychology of Positive Thinking, I wrote:


• Estimates of the number of neurons in the brain are in the range of twelve to fifteen billion and more.** If we were to represent each neuron in the brain by a light bulb (which may be either “off” or “on”) taking up one cubic foot of space, it would take a room a mile long, a mile wide, and five hundred feet high to contain it! If we then added hook-ups between these lights as they occur between the neurons, the various light patterns that could be displayed (possible combinations of “turned on” lights, or cell assemblies) would be equal to the number 7, followed by 14 million zeros!!!

• Seven, followed by 14 million zeros… that is a very impressive number! I asked my daughter how big she thought that number was. She was in second grade at the time, and starting to learn some math concepts. She thought a minute, perplexed, and then seemed to brighten as she answered my question with another question: “Oh, Daddy! Is that how much infinity is?” Maybe so.
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**that observation was made years ago. It was actually quite an underestimation. Today scientists believe that there are over a hundred billion neurons present in the brain, and each one of those neurons has between five and a hundred thousand interconnections with other neurons.


This is a truly fantastic number. We can call this number infinity! And we all have this potential Mind Power! With this Higher Power in our computer- we can account for the universe of experiences that we have in our lifetime. This is the data bank that has formed, and continues to form as you experience life. This data bank has made you become the person who you are today. All our experiences from our entire lives, everything we believe to be true about the universe and our place in it are stored there.
Visual- mind instruction manual picture of “How to” manual

What a fantastic machine! If only we could control our infinitely powerful brain! But our brain didn’t come with an “Owner’s Manual,” and sometimes we struggle and feel very limited, instead of limitless. So our mind is this super computer, with software and hardware, even an operating system. Our physical brain- the hundred billion-plus neurons with all their interconnections- is the hardware. The software consists of the innumerable ways that these neurons become interconnected over time. These range from simple neuron-to-neuron connections to programs which are highly complex.