[Available in Bulgarian here: https://psychology.ink/mozakat-ne-misli-na-chasti/]
Why does one person perceive criticism as an opportunity for growth, while another experiences it as a personal attack? Why can the same situation evoke anxiety, curiosity, or indifference depending on who is facing it? Psychology has long sought answers to these questions in personality, emotions, memory, and the social environment. A new study published in Nature offers another perspective. It suggests that the brain itself may not process these factors separately. Instead, from the very earliest stages of cortical processing, they are woven together into shared patterns of neural activity that make every situation unique.
On July 15, 2026, Nature published a study that challenges one of the long-standing assumptions about how the cerebral cortex processes information. For decades, the prevailing view held that individual neurons perform clearly defined functions. According to this model, some neurons encode visual features, others movement, still others expected reward or specific behaviors. The new study demonstrates that the actual organization of the cerebral cortex is considerably more complex and far more flexible.
The central finding is that the cerebral cortex does not encode information through large numbers of narrowly specialized neurons. Instead, it relies on diverse, mixed, and high-dimensional representations that maximize flexibility and the ability to distinguish between different situations. In other words, the brain does not process the world as a collection of separate components. It continuously constructs integrated, multilayered representations of each situation. This capacity allows us to adapt, learn from experience, modify our behavior, and discover different solutions to the same problem. For this reason, the study is important not only for neuroscience but also for contemporary cognitive, social, and clinical psychology.
We tend to believe that we know our own minds well. We are convinced that we can distinguish between reason and emotion, recognize when our decisions are based on logic, and identify when they are shaped by past experience. The language we use every day reinforces this impression. We say that "reason prevailed," that "emotions took over," that "intuition pointed us in the right direction," or that "painful memories prevented us from judging the situation objectively." Without giving it much thought, we describe the mind as though it consisted of separate mechanisms that periodically take turns directing our behavior. This way of thinking is so intuitive that we rarely question it. At school, we learn that different regions of the brain perform different functions. Later, psychology introduces us to attention, memory, perception, motivation, personality, emotion, and thought as distinct concepts, each governed by its own principles and explanations. This analytical division is valuable. It allows us to study extraordinarily complex processes one at a time. Yet it has a limitation. Sometimes we begin to mistake the analytical model for reality itself.
Real life, however, almost never conforms to such neat divisions.
Imagine walking down the street when you unexpectedly encounter someone you have not seen in many years. Recognizing the person's face is only the beginning. At the same moment, memories are retrieved, emotions emerge, your attention shifts, you begin evaluating the situation, anticipating how the conversation might unfold, and considering what would be most appropriate to say. If you once shared a close relationship, your reaction will probably differ from what it would be if your parting had been painful. If you are rushing to an important meeting, you will respond one way. If you are enjoying a leisurely walk, you may respond quite differently. All of this unfolds within fractions of a second, so naturally that we scarcely notice it. Later, when we try to explain our own reaction, we usually settle on a single explanation. We say we became emotional because we were happy to see the person. Or we remained distant because of an unpleasant memory. We are naturally drawn to simple explanations. The reality, however, is almost always far more complex. In that brief moment, memory, emotion, and reasoning did not operate independently. They all contributed simultaneously to the construction of a single, unified experience.
This brings us to one of the most compelling questions in contemporary psychology. Does the distinction between thinking, emotion, memory, and perception exist only within our scientific models, or does it genuinely reflect the way the brain functions? Is it possible that the human mind is not a collection of separate systems but rather a continuous process in which every component influences every other within an integrated whole?
For a long time, questions of this kind remained largely within the domains of philosophy and psychology. Neuroscience appeared to follow a different path. Its goal was to identify with increasing precision which brain regions support particular functions and how individual neurons encode information. This approach has yielded remarkable insights into the organization of the brain. Yet over time, a paradox began to emerge. The more knowledge accumulated, the more difficult it became to explain human behavior in terms of clearly delineated neural mechanisms.
Over the past several years, substantial evidence has shown that different brain regions work together far more extensively than previously assumed. Even so, one fundamental question has remained unresolved. What happens at the level of individual neurons? Are they themselves highly specialized, each performing a narrowly defined task, or are the boundaries between their functions far less distinct?
This question lies at the heart of the study published only days ago in Nature under the title Rarely Categorical, Highly Separable Representations Along the Cortical Hierarchy. It is a highly specialized neuroscience investigation examining how the cerebral cortex represents information. Yet its significance may extend well beyond our understanding of neurons alone. Its conclusions challenge the way we have thought about the human mind for decades.
Perhaps the study's most important message is not simply that the brain is more complex than we once believed. That, by itself, would hardly be surprising. The more profound implication is that the very language we use to describe our inner experience may require reconsideration. If the brain does not process the world through isolated categories but through the continuous integration of many interacting processes, then the human mind cannot be understood as a collection of separate psychological functions. Thought, emotion, memory, and intention may never exist independently. Instead, they may represent different perspectives on a single, continuous process that constructs our experience of the world and of ourselves every second of our lives.
This is the broader idea suggested by one of the most ambitious neuroscience studies of recent years. And the deeper we examine its findings, the clearer it becomes that the central question is not how individual neurons function. The real question is whether we have been asking the right questions about the human mind in the first place.
How the Idea of Specialized Neurons Emerged
To understand why this study has attracted so much attention, we need to go back more than half a century. During the second half of the twentieth century, neurobiology underwent a genuine revolution. For the first time, scientists were able to record the activity of individual neurons while animals perceived the world around them. What they discovered was remarkable. Some neurons became active only when the eye detected a line with a particular orientation. Others responded to movement in a specific direction. Still others reacted to precise features of a visual image. Suddenly, the brain appeared far more organized than anyone had imagined. Instead of a chaotic collection of billions of cells, researchers began to see an orderly system in which different groups of neurons performed distinct functions. This became one of the landmark discoveries of modern neuroscience and laid the foundation for decades of research.
Over time, this line of thinking expanded naturally. If certain neurons could detect specific visual features, why should there not also be neurons specialized for much more complex representations? Faces. Objects. Places. Memories. Decisions. This gave rise to an idea that was never a formal scientific theory but became an extraordinarily influential way of thinking. In popular science, it became known as the "grandmother neuron." Imagine that somewhere in the brain there is a cell that becomes active every time you see your own grandmother. By the same logic, there could be a neuron for your favorite song, your childhood home, a particular scent, or the face of someone you love.
Of course, scientists rarely interpreted this idea literally. No serious neuroscientist believed that a single cell could contain the entire memory of a loved one. As a conceptual model, however, it proved remarkably useful. It suggested that the brain could be understood as a system composed of many specialized elements, each carrying out its own function.
This approach produced impressive results. It gradually enabled researchers to identify which brain regions are involved in language, spatial navigation, motor control, and visual processing. In a sense, neuroscience began mapping the brain much as geographers once mapped the Earth.
Yet the more detailed the map became, the more questions began to emerge.
It became clear that the same brain region could contribute to many different functions. At the same time, almost no function depended exclusively on a single region. Memory, for example, does not "reside" in one location. Emotions do not originate from a single center. Decision-making involves the coordinated activity of numerous interconnected structures. Gradually, the picture became more complex. What is particularly interesting is that this shift did not occur because the earlier discoveries were wrong. They remain entirely valid. The difference is that they described only one level of a much more intricate organization.
A useful analogy is a symphony orchestra. If we listen to the instruments individually, we can easily describe the role of the violins, cellos, or flutes. Each instrument has its own distinctive sound and its own musical part. Yet no one would claim that the music resides in the cello or that the melody belongs solely to the violins. What we hear is an integrated whole that emerges from the interaction of all the musicians. For many years, neuroscience was primarily focused on studying the individual "instruments." This was not because of theory but because of technological limitations. Researchers simply lacked the ability to observe sufficiently large populations of neurons simultaneously and to track how different regions of the cerebral cortex interacted in real time. For decades, neuroscience worked with fragments of the overall picture and, quite naturally, developed models that emphasized individual components.
Over the past several years, however, technology has advanced at a pace few could have anticipated. Modern methods now allow researchers to record the activity of thousands of neurons simultaneously across multiple brain regions. Even more importantly, large international collaborations have begun collecting these data in standardized ways, allowing findings from different laboratories to be integrated into shared datasets.
This is where the International Brain Laboratory enters the story. The consortium brings together dozens of research teams with an ambitious goal. Rather than having each laboratory work independently on its own limited set of experiments, the researchers have created a large-scale resource that makes it possible to uncover the general principles governing the organization of the cerebral cortex.
This has transformed not only the amount of available information but also the kinds of questions that can now be asked.
Instead of asking whether a particular neuron responds to a given stimulus, researchers can now pose a much deeper question. How much of reality does that neuron actually represent? Does it encode only a single feature, or does it contribute to many different aspects of experience? And if thousands of neurons are examined simultaneously, will we find a collection of highly specialized units, or will we uncover a far more flexible and interconnected system?
These are precisely the questions addressed by the study published in Nature. Rather than searching for striking examples of highly specialized cells, the authors set out to test whether specialization is truly the fundamental organizing principle of the cerebral cortex. This represents an important shift in perspective. They are no longer asking what a single neuron does. Instead, they ask how the brain as a whole constructs its representation of the world.
The answer turns out to be both surprising and deeply intuitive. The more data the researchers analyzed, the more difficult it became to assign neurons to clearly defined categories. Instead of revealing a collection of isolated specialists, the evidence pointed to a system in which individual neurons continuously participate in different combinations, with meaning emerging not from the activity of a single neuron but from the coordinated activity of thousands. This idea is the study's most important conclusion and opens the door to an entirely new way of thinking, not only about the brain but also about the human mind.
What the Findings Actually Show
To determine how specialized neurons in the cerebral cortex truly are, the researchers analyzed the activity of more than 14,000 neurons recorded across 43 cortical regions during approximately 180 experimental sessions. The animals performed the same behavioral task throughout the study, allowing data collected in different laboratories to be directly compared. During these experiments, the researchers tracked how neurons responded to sensory inputs, movements, behavioral choices, expected rewards, and various features of the ongoing task.
A dataset of this scale makes it possible to ask a question that would be difficult to answer convincingly by observing only a handful of neurons in a single brain region. When a neuron changes its activity during the task, what exactly is it responding to? Is it the visual stimulus, the movement being performed, the choice the animal makes, the anticipated outcome, or some combination of these factors? The traditional model would predict a relatively clear division of labor. Some neurons should represent sensory information, others should be involved in movement preparation, still others should encode decisions, while another group should respond to reward. The results, however, revealed a far less compartmentalized picture.
The authors found that strictly specialized neurons are relatively uncommon. Most cells could not be convincingly assigned to a single function because their activity carried information about multiple aspects of behavior simultaneously. A neuron that responds to a sensory stimulus may also be sensitive to the animal's choice or to the movement it performs. Another may contribute to representing a previous event, the current action, and its expected consequence. This does not mean that all neurons respond in the same way or that differences between brain regions disappear. On the contrary, the study identifies a clear cortical hierarchy. In primary sensory areas, neuronal responses remain comparatively specialized. Cells in these regions are more likely to encode specific properties of visual or auditory information. As processing advances toward regions involved in more complex cognitive functions, these clear boundaries gradually become less distinct. Individual neurons begin to represent multiple elements of a situation simultaneously, making the activity of a single cell increasingly difficult to describe in terms of one specific function.
This gradual shift along the cortical hierarchy is one of the study's key findings. The brain does not abandon specialization altogether. Rather, it builds upon it. Early stages of processing require precise identification of incoming signals. Light must be distinguished from shadow, movement in one direction from movement in another, one sound from another. Higher levels of the system are no longer concerned simply with detecting individual features. Their task is to integrate these features into a coherent representation of the situation, relate them to previous experience, and use them to guide appropriate behavior.
One way to think about this process is to compare it to reading a novel. At the beginning, every letter must be identified accurately. If a single letter is misread, the word itself may become unintelligible. Yet when we read an entire book, no individual letter contains the plot, the emotional atmosphere, or the meaning of the story. These emerge from the relationships among words, sentences, characters, and everything the reader already knows.
Something very similar appears to occur in the cerebral cortex. At lower levels of processing, information remains relatively concrete. At higher levels, it becomes incorporated into much richer representations that describe not only what is present in front of us, but also what it means in the current context and what actions should follow.
This is where the study's second major conclusion emerges. Although individual neurons rarely fall into clear functional categories, different behavioral states and situations can nevertheless be distinguished with remarkable accuracy when the activity of the entire neuronal population is considered. The authors describe this property as highly separable representations. By this, they refer to the brain's ability to generate distinct patterns of neural activity even for situations that share many common features.
At first glance, this seems paradoxical. One might expect that if individual neurons respond to multiple variables, the resulting information would become less precise. If a neuron is activated by several different factors, how can the brain determine what is actually happening? The answer is that meaning never depends on a single neuron. It emerges from the overall pattern of activity across the entire population.
A single musical note can appear in countless melodies without losing its usefulness. Its significance depends on the notes surrounding it, the rhythm, the harmony, and the composition in which it appears. In much the same way, an individual neuron can participate in many different representations, while each situation is defined by a distinct combination of active cells. The individual elements are reused, but the overall pattern remains unique.
This is the essence of the high-dimensional representations described by the authors. In ordinary physical space, we distinguish objects by a limited number of features such as size, shape, and color. Neural representations, however, may encompass a vast number of dimensions simultaneously. Alongside sensory features, they incorporate movement, context, timing, previous actions, anticipated outcomes, and numerous other variables. The greater the number of independent relationships that can be represented, the easier it becomes to distinguish between situations that appear superficially similar.
Consider a simple example from everyday life. The sentence, "That was very clever," may be sincere praise, an ironic remark, an attempt at reconciliation, or a subtle criticism. The words themselves remain unchanged, but their meaning depends on tone of voice, facial expression, the relationship between the speakers, the preceding conversation, and the setting in which they are spoken. If the brain encoded only the individual words, all of these situations would appear almost identical. If, however, each situation is represented by a different combination of contextual features, distinguishing among them becomes straightforward.
From this perspective, mixed selectivity is not a limitation of the system. It is one of its greatest strengths. It allows a finite number of neurons to participate in an enormous variety of mental states without requiring a completely separate group of cells for every new situation. The brain can reuse the same neural elements in different configurations, much as language can generate an unlimited number of sentences from a finite vocabulary.
This principle also explains why higher cortical regions appear less specialized. Their role is not to represent a single isolated fact but to combine information in ways that enable the organism to respond appropriately to an ever-changing environment. To make an effective decision, the brain must consider not only what is happening now, but also what happened moments ago, what occurred much earlier, what outcome is expected, what has been learned from past experience, and what alternative actions remain available. If each of these variables were processed entirely independently, some additional mechanism would still be required to integrate them. The findings suggest that this integration does not occur only at the end of processing. Instead, it is embedded in the very way neuronal populations represent information. Different factors become intertwined from the earliest stages of processing, jointly shaping the neural state that will guide the next action.
Naturally, the study examines a specific experimental task using animal models. It does not directly explain how human personality, consciousness, or complex social experiences arise. It would be far too ambitious to derive a comprehensive theory of the human mind from a single neural principle. The broader significance of the findings lies elsewhere. They reveal an organizational principle that aligns closely with a long-standing insight from psychology: context is not something added to an experience after it occurs. It is an intrinsic part of the experience itself.
We do not first perceive a neutral event and only afterward color it with memories, emotions, and expectations. All of these influences participate in shaping the experience from the very beginning. This is why the same world is never experienced in exactly the same way by two different people, and sometimes not even by the same person at different moments. The study does not suggest that the brain lacks organization. Rather, it shows that its organization differs fundamentally from the model that comes most naturally to us. It resembles not an administrative structure with separate departments, each assigned a single task, but a dynamic network whose elements continually change their roles depending on the overall situation and on their interactions with one another.
This form of organization makes both stability and flexibility possible. The brain can recognize familiar patterns without becoming confined by them. It can draw upon previous experience without reducing every new situation to a replica of the past. It can maintain consistency in behavior while remaining capable of adapting to changing circumstances.
What These Findings Mean for Psychology
This is where the study begins to acquire a deeper psychological significance. If neural representations arise through combinations that depend on the situation, then human behavior can hardly be explained by any single isolated cause. No emotion, personality trait, thought, or memory operates independently. Their significance changes according to the other elements with which they are connected at any given moment. This does not eliminate the distinctions between them, but it suggests that their psychological role cannot be understood outside the broader configuration in which they are embedded.
This perspective brings us to the central question of this article. What changes in our understanding of human nature if we accept that the mind is not a collection of separate mechanisms, but a continuous process of combining, differentiating, and transforming experience?
If we take this view seriously, one of the first casualties of the traditional way of thinking is likely to be the assumption that behavior reveals some hidden, stable essence of a person. Everyday language encourages precisely this conclusion. Someone arrives late, and we label them irresponsible. Someone refuses to speak in public, and we conclude they lack confidence. Someone raises their voice, and we describe them as aggressive. A single action quickly becomes evidence of an enduring trait, and that trait is then treated as the explanation for the action itself. He behaves this way because that is who he is. And we know who he is because he behaves this way.
Psychological concepts are not useless simply because they sometimes participate in this circular reasoning. They can describe stable patterns, summarize repeated observations, and help us predict how a person is likely to respond. The problem arises when we forget that a description is not the same as an explanation. Calling someone anxious does not explain why, on this particular evening, in this particular room, and in front of these particular people, they were unable to utter a sentence they had carefully prepared. To understand that, we need to consider their personal history, the present circumstances, bodily sensations, expectations, relationship to their own thoughts, and the consequences they anticipate. We need context.
At this point, neuroscience converges with a long-standing tradition in psychology that has argued that behavior cannot be understood apart from the conditions in which it occurs. Within contextual behavioral science, this is not merely a reminder to pay attention to circumstances. It is a philosophical starting point. Contextual functionalism views psychological events as actions of a whole organism situated within a particular historical and environmental context. The goal is not to identify a hidden substance behind behavior but to discover the relationships that make behavior predictable and influenceable with sufficient precision, scope, and depth. The distinction may seem abstract, yet it fundamentally changes the questions we ask. Instead of asking, Why is this person anxious?, we might ask, Under what conditions does anxiety begin to organize this person's behavior? Instead of asking, Why is there no motivation?, we might ask, What happens before withdrawal begins, what immediate consequences does it provide, and what does it gradually take away over time? Instead of asking, How can we eliminate negative thoughts?, we might ask, Under what circumstances do these thoughts gain the power to restrict action, and under what conditions can a person experience them without allowing them to govern their life?
This is not merely a matter of wording. In the first set of questions, the problem is located within the individual as a characteristic or defect. In the second, it is understood as a relationship between the individual, their history, and their circumstances. One perspective seeks an explanation in a presumed internal cause. The other asks about function. What does this behavior accomplish in its present context? What does it protect the individual from? What does it bring them closer to? How did it develop? Why does it persist even when it clearly contributes to suffering?
The concept of function is easily misunderstood. It does not imply that every behavior is rational or beneficial in the long term. Rather, it means that behavior is maintained because of its consequences. A person may cancel social engagements because doing so reduces anxiety for several hours. Someone may repeatedly check their partner's phone because it provides a temporary sense of certainty. Another person may postpone an important task because procrastination temporarily relieves the fear of failure. The behavior makes sense within the narrow horizon of the present, even while it gradually constricts the person's life.
From this perspective, context is not simply the background against which psychological life unfolds. It actively participates in creating psychological meaning. An increased heartbeat may be experienced as excitement before an anticipated reunion, as danger during a panic attack, or as a normal physiological response while running. The bodily sensation remains the same, yet its psychological significance depends on where it occurs, what preceded it, how it is interpreted, what previous experiences the individual has with it, and what actions follow.
The same principle applies to thoughts. The statement, I am not good enough, may be a passing doubt, a painful reminder of earlier criticism, a reason to prepare more carefully, or a command to give up altogether. The words remain unchanged, yet their psychological function may differ profoundly. For one person, the thought comes and goes without altering the course of the day. For another, it becomes the reason not to apply for a position, not to start a conversation, or not to try at all. The psychological problem therefore does not necessarily reside in the thought itself. It may lie in the network of relationships that has developed around it.
This is precisely where Relational Frame Theory, one of the central theoretical foundations of contextual behavioral science, offers a particularly compelling account of human language and cognition. The theory examines our ability to relate events through learned patterns and to transform their meaning according to those relationships. An object is experienced not only through its immediate physical properties but also through its place within an entire network of comparisons, evaluations, memories, and symbols. A word, an image, or a thought can acquire some of the functions of whatever it has become associated with, even when that original event is no longer present.
A person does not need to be humiliated again in order to experience shame. It may be enough to remember the room where it happened, hear a similar tone of voice, or imagine a future situation in which it might happen again. Language carries the past into the present and transforms the future into something that can influence us here and now. This remarkable capacity enables us to plan, learn, create culture, and transmit knowledge. Yet through the same mechanism we can also suffer because of events that ended long ago and avoid dangers that exist only as possibilities.
The brain described in the Nature study appears remarkably well suited to such a world. It is not a world of isolated stimuli with fixed meanings, but one of relationships, in which the same event acquires different significance depending on the network in which it is embedded. It would be an overstatement to claim that these neural findings directly validate contextual functionalism or Relational Frame Theory. They operate at different levels of explanation and rely on different methods. Nevertheless, there is a striking resonance between them. In both perspectives, meaning is not contained within individual elements. It emerges from the configuration of relationships among them.
This understanding also changes how we think about personality. We usually describe personality as a collection of relatively stable traits. We say that someone is outgoing, conscientious, impulsive, or kind. Such descriptions can be useful, especially when they summarize behavior across many situations over long periods. Yet no trait expresses itself identically in every context. A person may be exceptionally relaxed among close friends and almost silent during a professional meeting. They may be patient with their child but abrupt with their parents. They may willingly take risks at work while avoiding every uncertainty in intimate relationships. These differences do not necessarily indicate inconsistency or multiple personalities. They suggest that behavior is organized by different contexts, different learning histories, and different anticipated consequences.
The stability of personality can also be understood in contextual terms. It does not require the same behavior to appear in every situation. Rather, certain patterns are repeatedly expressed because the individual consistently interprets the world through similar relational networks and responds to them in comparable ways. Someone who has learned that emotional closeness leads to rejection may behave differently with different people while consistently maintaining a safe emotional distance. Sometimes they may appear cold. Sometimes excessively independent. Sometimes they may repeatedly choose emotionally unavailable partners. The outward behaviors differ, yet their function remains similar. This allows us to understand consistency without reducing the person to an immutable essence. Personality may be viewed as a stable style of adaptation rather than a fixed entity that determines every action. This perspective frees us from the false choice between believing that people never change and believing that they become entirely different from one moment to the next. Stable patterns can exist while still expressing themselves differently across situations.
This understanding also leaves room for the possibility that individuals experience relatively stable internal positions or "parts," as described in certain psychotherapeutic approaches. It simply suggests that these parts are not independent psychological entities. Rather, they are relatively stable configurations of many interacting processes that emerge within particular contexts and can change as those contexts change.
The same tension between stability and change lies at the heart of learning. If the brain functioned like an archive with separate filing cabinets, learning could be understood as simply adding a new record to the correct location. Real learning, however, almost always changes more than the amount of stored information. It transforms the relationships among experiences. When a child learns the meaning of the word dangerous, they are not merely memorizing a definition. The word gradually becomes linked to adults' facial expressions, bodily reactions, rules, prohibitions, and consequences. When a student truly understands a theory, they do not simply accumulate facts. They begin to perceive familiar phenomena differently. When someone learns to recognize manipulation, conversations from the past may suddenly take on new meaning. New knowledge reshapes the interpretation of previous experience.
This also explains why learning acquired in one context does not automatically transfer to another. A person may speak confidently in a therapist's office yet remain silent in front of a supervisor. They may solve problems successfully in a textbook while failing to recognize the same principle in everyday life. They may sincerely believe they have the right to establish personal boundaries, yet in the presence of a particular family member, old relational patterns may immediately regain control. The knowledge is present, but the context activates a different behavioral history. What ultimately becomes necessary is commitment to a specific course of action within the very context in which that new behavior is meant to occur.
This perspective also sheds new light on memory. We tend to think of memories as records that are stored and later retrieved. Yet remembering is not like opening an archive. Every memory is reconstructed within a present context that influences what becomes accessible, which details stand out, and what meaning we assign to them. A painful breakup may feel like proof of personal failure during the first few weeks, like a painful but necessary ending a year later, and like a decisive turning point a decade afterward. The event itself has not changed. What has changed are its relationships with everything that has happened since. New experiences, new words, new people, and new interpretations have become connected to it. In this sense, the past remains the same while simultaneously becoming something different.
The contextual nature of memory does not imply that truth is irrelevant or that every version of the past is equally valid. It means that our access to the past is always mediated by the present. The person who remembers is no longer the same person who originally experienced the event. They carry new knowledge, new losses, and a new language for understanding themselves. Every act of remembering is therefore an encounter between the traces of the original experience and the organization of the present moment.
Emotions also appear in a different light once we stop viewing them as internal forces with fixed functions. Fear may protect us from genuine danger, but it may also confine us within an increasingly restricted world. Anger may defend personal boundaries, conceal helplessness, or create emotional distance. Sadness may slow our actions and direct attention toward loss, yet in another context it may become a way of receiving care or avoiding risk. There is no need to assume that these functions are consciously chosen. Most are shaped gradually through the consequences of behavior. For this reason, the distinction between positive and negative emotions is psychologically appealing but often misleading. Pleasant feelings do not necessarily lead to a meaningful life, and unpleasant emotions are not necessarily obstacles. Relief after avoidance feels good, yet it may strengthen anxiety. Shame is painful, but it can sometimes motivate a person to repair the harm they have caused. Fear during an important conversation does not mean that having the conversation is a mistake. The pain of separation is not necessarily a symptom that must be eliminated. It may simply be the natural cost of attachment.
The essential question is no longer merely what a person feels, but how that feeling functions within their life. What actions does it give rise to? What possibilities does it open, and what does it prevent? With which thoughts, images, and personal rules is it associated? Does it guide behavior toward what truly matters to the individual, or does it gradually distance them from the things they value most?
This perspective has profound implications for psychotherapy. If suffering is understood as a defective inner component, treatment naturally focuses on correcting or eliminating it. If anxiety is the enemy, it must be defeated. If an unpleasant thought is considered false, it should be replaced. If a painful memory causes distress, the goal appears to be reducing its emotional impact or making it disappear altogether. Sometimes such changes are possible and beneficial. The contextual perspective, however, introduces a different possibility. Even when the content of inner experience cannot immediately be changed, one's relationship to that experience and one's behavior in its presence can.
A person can learn to recognize a thought as a thought rather than as an instruction. They can experience anxiety and still take a step toward an important conversation. They can carry sadness without organizing their entire life around avoiding it. They can stop waiting for their internal world to become perfect before beginning to live according to what truly matters to them.
This is where the concept of psychological flexibility becomes central. It occupies a foundational place in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and in the broader tradition of contextual behavioral science. Psychological flexibility refers to the capacity to remain in contact with the present moment and with one's own experience without automatically submitting to it, while retaining the ability to continue or modify one's behavior in ways that are consistent with both the current situation and personally chosen values.
Flexibility does not mean constant accommodation or a willingness to give in. Sometimes the most flexible response is to remain exactly where one is and endure considerable pressure. At other times, it is to leave. Sometimes flexibility requires patience; at other times, confrontation. No behavior is inherently flexible in every circumstance. Its usefulness depends on its function, its context, and the direction in which it moves the individual.
This logic closely mirrors the pattern emerging from the neural findings. An individual neuron has no permanent role that remains fixed across every situation. Its contribution depends on the broader pattern of activity in which it participates. Similarly, a psychological response cannot be evaluated solely by its outward form. Silence may reflect fear, self-control, respect, resistance, or punishment. Leaving may represent avoidance, but it may also be an act of necessary self-protection. Persistence may express commitment to deeply held values, or it may reflect an inability to acknowledge an obvious loss.
In this way, contextual thinking challenges not the existence of regularities but the tendency toward mechanical generalization. It does not claim that everything depends on everything else to the point where nothing can be understood. On the contrary, its aim is to identify principles that are sufficiently precise while avoiding the mistake of separating behavior from the conditions that give it its function. The scientific challenge is not to catalogue an endless list of circumstances but to identify those conditions that genuinely alter the probability and the meaning of behavior.
From this perspective, mental disorders can also be understood not merely as collections of symptoms but as stable, self-sustaining patterns of interaction. Diagnostic categories retain genuine clinical and scientific value. They help identify similar forms of suffering, organize research, and guide treatment. Yet the same symptom may serve different psychological functions, while very different symptoms may be maintained by the same underlying process.
Two individuals may avoid social situations, but one may fear humiliation while the other is convinced that their presence burdens those around them. Two people may devote endless hours to work, yet one may be driven by curiosity and commitment, whereas the other works incessantly simply to avoid being alone with their own thoughts. The observable behavior is similar. Its psychological function is not.
The reverse is equally true. Attempts to escape an unbearable internal experience may take many different forms, including social withdrawal, substance use, compulsive planning, overeating, excessive work, or the constant search for reassurance. If we focus only on the outward form of these behaviors, we will see a collection of separate problems. If we examine their function, however, we may discover a common pattern in which short-term relief consistently prevails over long-term vitality and psychological well-being.
This does not reduce all psychological difficulties to products of context, nor does it deny the role of biology. Genetic vulnerability, the nervous system, sleep, hormonal changes, chronic pain, and many other biological factors play essential roles. Yet none of these operates in isolation. Biology shapes the way individuals respond to their environment, while the environment, in turn, influences biological processes. Separating the two may be useful for scientific investigation, but life itself is under no obligation to respect the boundaries between academic disciplines.
In this sense, the contextual perspective offers an antidote to two equally reductionist temptations. The first is to reduce the individual to their brain, as though a brain scan alone could explain the meaning of loss, choice, or fear. The second is to disregard biology altogether and interpret everything solely through narrative, culture, or social influence. A more complete understanding requires integrating these different levels of explanation without elevating any one of them as the only reality.
A neural account can explain how a system integrates vast amounts of information to produce distinct patterns of activity. A psychological account can explain how those patterns acquire meaning in the life of a particular individual. Behavioral analysis can reveal how actions develop and are maintained through their consequences. A social perspective can illuminate how family, language, institutional structures, economic conditions, and cultural norms create the contexts in which all of these processes unfold. None of these levels is sufficient on its own.
This also changes how we think about therapeutic change. It is not necessarily a matter of repairing a damaged mechanism. More often, it resembles the expansion of a person's behavioral repertoire. Where there was once only a single response, several alternatives gradually become available. Where a thought once functioned as an unquestionable command, it becomes one of many possible signals. Where anxiety once led automatically to withdrawal, it becomes possible to pause, choose, and act. Change does not require erasing the past. Old patterns may remain accessible and may still reappear during difficult moments. The difference is that they are no longer the only available option. People do not necessarily free themselves from their history, but they gain greater freedom in deciding how that history continues.
This is a more realistic and humane understanding of mental health. It does not equate psychological well-being with constant comfort, the absence of inner conflict, or the permanent resolution of every emotional struggle. Mental health is expressed through the capacity to respond openly to reality, to endure unavoidable pain, to modify behavior when previous strategies no longer serve their purpose, and to maintain direction even when emotions are not pleasant.
From this perspective, values are not goals that can be permanently completed, nor are they moral slogans imposed from the outside. They are chosen qualities of action, enduring directions that organize behavior across changing circumstances. One never finishes being compassionate, curious, or honest. In every new situation, these values must be translated into action once again. This is precisely why values increase, rather than eliminate, the importance of context. Honesty does not mean telling everyone everything at all times. Compassion does not require perpetual gentleness. Courage does not mean the absence of fear. Every value must be expressed differently depending on the circumstances, and sometimes two deeply held values come into conflict, demanding difficult choices.
Human freedom, in this view, is not independence from all causes. Such freedom is impossible. We are shaped by biology, language, family, culture, and chance. Freedom lies instead in becoming aware of the influences operating in the present moment and in avoiding complete captivity to automatic reactions. It consists in increasing our sensitivity to context, including those aspects of context that matter most to us.
Seen in this way, a person is neither a collection of fixed traits nor a shapeless product of circumstance. A human being is an ongoing story that continues to evolve through its encounter with the present. Every moment carries traces of previous learning, yet those traces always appear in forms transformed by what is happening here and now. New relationships emerge, new consequences unfold, and with them come new possibilities for action. This is precisely what makes psychological change possible. If every reaction were simply the direct expression of an immutable essence, psychotherapy, education, and learning would have only limited value. If behavior were determined entirely by the immediate situation, there would be no enduring personal continuity. The contextual perspective brings these two realities together. History is always present within the present, yet the present is never merely a repetition of history.
Perhaps this is why the findings of the study resonate so strongly with everyday human experience. There is no small command center in the brain that first interprets a situation and then instructs the remaining parts what to do. Nor are there individual neurons that possess the definitive meaning of what is taking place. Instead, there is a continuously evolving configuration in which sensory input, movement, expectation, and prior experience mutually shape one another.
At the psychological level, our experience appears to follow the same principle. We are not first individuals with fully formed personalities to whom situations are later added. Nor are we pure reason onto which emotions subsequently exert external influence. We do not perceive the world in a neutral state and only afterward interpret it. Perception itself already carries the imprint of history, language, the body, and expectation. This does not erase the distinctions between thought, emotion, memory, and action. These remain useful conceptual categories, just as we can distinguish individual instruments within an orchestra. Yet psychological life does not reside in any one of them alone. It emerges through their relationships, through the ways they amplify, constrain, and transform one another in response to the demands of each particular moment.
For this reason, the question Which part of me did this? rarely has a satisfying answer. A more productive question is: How did this entire situation become organized? What did we notice? What did we remember? What did we expect? What were we trying to protect ourselves from? What were we trying to move toward? When we ask these questions, behavior ceases to appear as the mysterious expression of an inner defect. It becomes a pattern that can be understood.
And whatever can be understood as a process can also be influenced.
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