Writer. Builder. Founder of Aivex Systems.

For business work: aivexsystems.com

Pages

Articles Series What I Eat Projects Services About Contact

Articles

Exploring tech & AI, business, philosophy, psychology, and health & wellbeing.

All Psychology Science Health & Wellbeing Tech & AI Mind & Body Philosophy Business Wellness|Series

39 articles · page 2 of 3

Psychology8 min readMar 29, 2026

You Can't Cross-Train Your Brain

The research on transfer of learning is unambiguous and mostly ignored. Practicing X makes you better at X, and almost nothing else. The dream of portable skill is largely a myth.

Cover image for Your Brain Learns Nothing When You Get It Right

Psychology

Newer2 / 3Older

9 min read

Mar 29, 2026

Your Brain Learns Nothing When You Get It Right

Wolfram Schultz's discovery of dopamine prediction error signals explains why every effective learning strategy in this series works, and why smooth practice is the enemy.

Psychology7 min readMar 29, 2026

Your Brain Is Hallucinating Right Now

You don't perceive reality. Your brain generates a hallucination and checks it against incoming data. It's called predictive processing, and it means your senses correct your perception instead of creating it.

Psychology8 min readMar 29, 2026

Your Brain Learns by Being Wrong

Dopamine doesn't fire when you get a reward. It fires when you get a reward you didn't expect. This single discovery about prediction errors rewired everything we know about learning, attention, and why habits are so hard to break.

Psychology7 min readMar 29, 2026

Your Brain Runs on Probability, Not Facts

Every belief you hold is a bet. The mathematical framework behind predictive processing explains why first impressions stick, why anxiety hijacks your body, and why you literally cannot see evidence that contradicts what you already believe.

Psychology7 min readMar 29, 2026

Your Brain Invents Every Emotion You Feel

Emotions aren't hardwired reactions triggered by the world. They're predictions your brain constructs from body signals, past experience, and context. Which means you can change the inputs and change the feeling.

Psychology7 min readMar 29, 2026

Your Anxiety Is a Weather Forecast That's Always Wrong

Predictive processing reframes anxiety not as excessive fear but as a miscalibrated prediction system, one that's stuck forecasting storms that never arrive.

Psychology6 min readMar 29, 2026

Why Sugar Pills Actually Work

The placebo effect isn't a trick. It's your brain's prediction engine rewriting your neurochemistry in real time.

Psychology7 min readMar 29, 2026

Your Brain on Psychedelics Is Your Brain with the Filter Off

Psychedelics don't add anything to your brain. They remove the predictions that constrain it. The REBUS model explains why that's therapeutic.

Psychology7 min readMar 29, 2026

You Don't Have a Spotlight in Your Head

Attention isn't a beam that illuminates the world. It's a volume knob that controls which prediction errors your brain takes seriously.

Psychology7 min readMar 29, 2026

You Are a Hallucination You Tell Yourself

Your sense of self isn't a soul or a core identity. It's a prediction your brain generates and updates in real time, just like everything else you perceive.

Psychology8 min readMar 29, 2026

Rewriting the Predictions: A User Manual for Your Brain

If your brain is a prediction machine, then changing your life means changing your predictions. The research points to specific mechanisms for doing exactly that.

Psychology7 min readMar 29, 2026

182,000 People May Have Died From a Belief

A massive study found that believing stress is harmful increased mortality by 43%. But people with high stress who didn't hold that belief? They had some of the lowest death rates in the entire study.

Psychology5 min readMar 29, 2026

Your Body Has Two Stress Modes (One Builds You Up, One Breaks You Down)

The same stressor can trigger two completely different cardiovascular responses. The difference isn't the situation. It's how your brain appraises it.

Psychology6 min readMar 29, 2026

The Stress Response Has a Built-In Repair System (You're Probably Not Using It)

For 80 years, stress research only studied men. When scientists finally included women, they discovered a second stress response that protects your heart. It activates through connection.

Psychology6 min readMar 29, 2026

Your Stress Beliefs Are Changing Your Hormones

Alia Crum at Stanford showed that how you think about stress changes what stress does to your body. Not metaphorically. Measurably. At the hormonal level.

Psychology5 min readMar 29, 2026

You're Not Too Stressed. You Might Be Too Calm.

The 1908 experiment that discovered optimal arousal still explains why your best work happens under pressure, and why eliminating all stress kills performance too.

Psychology6 min readMar 29, 2026

Tell Yourself You're Excited: The Three-Word Stress Intervention That Actually Works

Trying to calm down before a high-stakes moment is the wrong move. A Harvard researcher found that a single sentence reframe outperforms relaxation, and the physiology explains why.