Reading on neuroscience and the impact of nature (genes) vs nurture (environment). One concept of nurture is conditioning. There are 2 types - classic conditioning (little albert, pavlov theory) and operant conditioning (reinforcement, punishment). The brain/behaviour connection also can be influenced through habits, hypnosis, psychedelic substances, lifestyle, circadian rhythm and more.

In the Little Albert experiment, they used a little kid and a white rat (natural stimulus) that he initially had no reaction to, and paired it with unconditioned stimulus (loud noise to induce fear). The kid eventually got rattled with just the rat alone. One example of application is that if the parents are afraid of something, the kids might be afraid of it too as part of natural conditioning.

A similar study was done by Ivan Pavlov a few decades before this, on bells and dogs salivating. The concept was built around the consistency of dog being hungry, sees food (visual), bell is rang (audio). Eventually, the dog salivates with just the bell, without food.

Operant conditioning developed by Skinner has both +ve and -ve reinforcement and +ve and -ve punishment, with +ve reinforcement being the most effective of the operant conditioning. An added concept to this is shaping behaviors by breaking it down into smaller tasks and rewarding each completion. I use this quite a bit as a self booster.

Another concept of nurture is the art of creating a habit. This is not the exact same as conditioning, but it does overlap. The idea here is to create a routine practice that involves a process of behavioral repetition. Charles Duhigg in his book ‘The Power of Habit.’ talk about the habit loop which includes cue/trigger (what initiates the habit), routine and reward. I don't know if the 3 weeks thing is a thing (there are several studies on this) but repetition works - sometimes it takes longer than 21 days, sometimes shorter.

Hypnosis is slightly different as it induces a state of altered consciousness. It’s sort of like a trance-like state where you are not really aware of your surroundings. The goal is to explore your subconscious process. While both hypnosis and conditioning involves modification of behavior, they operate through different mechanisms and are used for diff purposes. Huberman has a lot of talks on this.

There are others along this brain / behavior line such as mushrooms that can alter your neural connectivity - esp those linked to self referential thoughts and sense of ego. Other things include having sufficient sleep that makes a lot of difference in behaviour. Change of a stressful environment is another modifier. Sunlight, circadian rhythm adds on to this.

There’s a lot more to the understanding of neurons and neuroscience - but these were some of the areas I've been wanting to understand a bit better.