Researchers Explain How the Brain Copes With Uncertainty

emotions

This is how people create their reality. They sift information through pre-existing frameworks, and they decide whether to discard it or not. It also helps you prioritize situations based on how fast to resolve it. If you’re dealing with an uncertain event that won’t affect you for a couple of years, your brain will dismiss it.

It will come back to it only when it becomes relevant for your present life. If that uncertain context impacts you right now, your brain will make it a priority. It will send it up to the prefrontal cortex in hopes of coming up with a plan. And that’s how you get to the third and last step, dealing with the effects of the stimuli.

3.    It Makes Conscious Decisions

The last step when dealing with uncertainty is developing a game plan for tackling the issue. That means deciding on a course of action based on the risk-reward trade-off. One thing to keep in mind is that the brain is often biased. It tries to rely on past experiences and pre-existing responses even when they are not applicable.

The brain is uncertainty adverse, so it will probably try to convince you to act as safe as possible and take no risks. In situations like these, you need to stay logical and make a fair analysis of the risk-reward trade-off. Don’t just give in to instincts, but try to think objectively about the information you’re assessing.

The prefrontal cortex will help you come up with a plan of action. You might feel jitters through this process, but that’s a good thing. That’s a result of the brain reconfiguring itself to maximize chances of success in the face of the unknown. As long as you stay rational, your brain will offer you all the tools you need to create the best plan.

The brain will start to create new pre-existing responses after seeing the outcome of this situation. What seemed uncertain before will now be something you’ve already been through. Your brain will be better suited to tackle a similar issue in the future.

Final Thoughts On How The Brain Copes With Uncertainty

Since the beginning of time, uncertainty has been one of the scariest things humanity has had to deal with. As society evolves and people’s lives become more and more complicated, the risk of uncertainty has increased substantially. Fortunately, the brain has devoted an entire circuit to dealing with the unknown.

Firstly, it pays attention to the signals around it while filtering the information it receives. It decides whether the information is relevant or not, and then it discards everything that’s not important. This way, it can focus and prioritize things that affect you. After that, it tries to decode ambiguous information by sifting it through pre-existing frameworks.

This aims to decide whether the information is threatening and how quickly to resolve it. Once that’s settled, the brain moves on to the last step, planning. It analyzes the risk-reward trade-off and aims to make the most fruitful decision for you.