A mechanism similar to CPU
There is a certain mechanism exists in the biological structure of a human brain. It is vital to human beings as it makes our brain function properly. Without it, human beings will suffer from cognitive impairment such as cognitive overload or deficiency. This mechanism can be compared to the function of a central processing unit to a computer system. First, it makes our brain input sensory information. Then it filters the sensory information according to our attention and pattern recognition. Then it rehearses the information to make it stay longer in the brain. After that, if the information is very important to us, it encodes it to produce long term memory for us and later we can retrieve it from the brain.
The information processing of the “CPU” is like playing jigsaw puzzle games
The information processing of the “CPU” at each of the above mentioned step within a human’ mind is like playing jigsaw puzzle games. Each jigsaw puzzle piece is “schema”, which represents the knowledge of things under one general category. Since there is so much knowledge remains unknown to humans, the jigsaw puzzle is far from complete that there are many empty slots in it. When the mind receives new information, it would figure out whether the new information has anything to do with the schema pieces it already has in order to make the jigsaw puzzle a more complete one.
Adding to the existing schema pieces
These pieces that the mind already has represent humans’ “prior knowledge”. If the new information works out with the prior knowledge, the mind has one more schema piece and one less spot left in the jigsaw puzzle. This is when human beings absorb new knowledge. For example, when I learn French, I find the spellings of many French words are similar to English words that I make comparison between the two to memorize the French words instead of rotting, which saves me a lot of time and energy.
Rearrange the schema pieces
Of course, sometimes the mind works less efficiently or even makes mistakes that it has to rearrange a lot of the schema pieces in order to get the jigsaw puzzle right. This is when human beings feel puzzled or depressed. An example is “why love makes people blind”. I recall once I watched a BBC documentary discussing about the secrets of love. It mentions that scientists have been looking at love, with the aid of MRI machine. In an experiment some subjects who had been "madly in love" were recruited and were shown two photographs, one neutral, the other of their loved one. Scientists were fascinated by the consistent results that certain parts of the subjects’ brain lit up when they saw the photos of their loved ones. The rewards system in the brain of the subjects floods with feel good chemicals while another part of their brain, the area used for critical thinking, switches off. Thus when love turns sour, people often rearrange their schema of a relationship.
Consciously or unconsciously change the schema pieces
Sometimes the mind finds the schema pieces it has never fit in the picture, then it would change or even get rid of them. In this sense I believe it is definitely worth noticing that the mind can consciously change the schema. As human beings go through a stage of changing their lens on the world and then see things from a bit of a different perspective, the memory of how human beings thought things worked would change. For example, a Buddhist or Christian is likely to adjust his schema based on his religious belief.
A really disconcerting point here is that sometimes the mind seems to make some of these changes on its own, without really consulting with humans’ logic or consciousness. When I am writing about this point, my mind retrieves an example mentioned by a professor in another course. He asked us if we ever wonder why police write all of the information down that an eyewitness of an accident has to give. The reason to this is that the version that the eyewitness gives will often change over time. He would likely to start including things that weren't there and taking out important things that were there. Therefore the mind changes bits and pieces of the real story and it does this on a regular basis.
A really disconcerting point here is that sometimes the mind seems to make some of these changes on its own, without really consulting with humans’ logic or consciousness. When I am writing about this point, my mind retrieves an example mentioned by a professor in another course. He asked us if we ever wonder why police write all of the information down that an eyewitness of an accident has to give. The reason to this is that the version that the eyewitness gives will often change over time. He would likely to start including things that weren't there and taking out important things that were there. Therefore the mind changes bits and pieces of the real story and it does this on a regular basis.
