2. How the Brain Learns to Meet Its Needs: The Psychology of Feeling, Learning, and Prediction
Introduction: Learning Isn’t Just Academic—It’s Emotional
From the moment we’re born, our brains are doing something remarkable: trying to figure out how to meet our needs in a world that’s constantly changing. Hunger, safety, love, purpose—all these needs drive us to learn.
But here's the twist: learning isn't just about facts or skills. It's about forming predictions—about how to meet our needs in real-life situations. This process is deeply emotional and physical. It’s how the brain adapts to experience, and it’s at the heart of mental health.
The Brain's Learning Mission: Meet Needs, Reduce Surprise
The brain’s top priority isn’t abstract knowledge—it’s need fulfillment. Whether it’s eating when we’re hungry or reconnecting with someone we love, our brain wants one thing: to reduce unmet needs.
To do this, it builds models of the world—called predictions—about what actions will meet our needs. This is why we don’t have to re-learn every situation from scratch. Instead, we apply past experiences to shape present choices.
But no prediction is perfect. Our environment changes. People surprise us. We make mistakes. So the brain must constantly update its predictions through learning. This is how emotional development occurs.
How Feelings Help Us Learn
According to Solms, all learning is driven by feelings. When a need goes unmet, we feel discomfort. When a prediction succeeds—when a need is met—the uncomfortable feeling disappears. This is how we know we’re on the right track.
Take hunger, for example:
The feeling of hunger signals a need.
Eating reduces the need—and the feeling fades.
Over time, we learn what foods satisfy us, when, and how.
This pattern applies to every core need: safety (fear), connection (panic/comfort), mastery (frustration/relief). In short, we feel our way through life. And when things go wrong, we often feel our way back to balance.
Why We Must Learn Early—and Why It’s So Hard
Our brains come preloaded with some basic “survival instincts,” but the real world is too complex to prepare for entirely. We must learn from lived experience—especially during early childhood, when the brain is most plastic.
But here's the challenge: in childhood, our instincts often conflict. We may feel angry when separated from a caregiver (rage vs. attachment), or curious about something scary (seeking vs. fear). These emotional collisions can cause lasting confusion if not supported by caregivers or safe environments.
Children have to learn compromises, delay gratification, and sometimes even meet needs through substitute strategies—like imagination, fantasy, or symbolic play. These mental tools are rooted in the brain's prefrontal cortex, the seat of decision-making and impulse control.
Feeling = Feedback: How Affect Regulates Behavior
One of Solms’ key ideas is this: the disappearance of a feeling is how the brain knows a need has been satisfied. It’s like a thermostat. When the room reaches the desired temperature, the heater shuts off. Similarly:
Unmet needs create unpleasant feelings
Met needs remove those feelings
Pleasure and relief signal that we’re moving in the right direction
In other words, our feelings are regulatory tools. They teach us what’s working and what isn’t.
This links to Freud’s famous but often misunderstood “Nirvana principle”—the idea that the ideal state of the organism is to feel nothing at all. That doesn’t mean death or numbness. It means a state of balance, where all needs are met and no alerts are going off. It's the brain’s version of peace.
When Learning Goes Wrong: Illusions, Addiction, and Ego Defenses
Sometimes, we mistake shortcuts for true solutions. For example:
A person might use substances to simulate the feeling of connection (e.g., opioids triggering the same system as social bonding).
Or they might rely on defenses like denial, fantasy, or dissociation to protect themselves from emotional pain.
These strategies can create the illusion that needs are met—but without lasting resolution. Solms emphasizes that these are not signs of a "death drive" (as Freud once thought), but rather failures to engage with real-world problem-solving.
True healing requires reconnecting with the real work of learning how to meet needs—in actual relationships, real situations, and conscious choices.
Thinking as Emotional Problem-Solving
What we call thinking is the brain’s way of testing ideas before acting. Instead of trying everything out in real life, we run simulations in the mind. This ability—called working memory—lets us imagine, predict, and choose wisely.
Working memory is limited (we can only hold a few ideas at once), so we use it carefully. Once a successful prediction is formed, the brain stores it in long-term memory, where it becomes automatic.
But when predictions fail—when we feel surprised, hurt, or afraid—the brain flags them for review. These moments of affective arousal are opportunities to update and grow.
Final Thoughts: Feeling Is the Fastest Way to Learn
Our brains are wired to survive by feeling, predicting, and adapting. Learning isn’t just about data—it’s about making sense of what we feel and adjusting how we act. When we understand our feelings, we can begin to understand the needs underneath them.
Therapy offers a space to explore this process. It helps us notice when we're running on outdated predictions—and supports us in forming new, more life-affirming ones.
REFERENCE
This article is based on Claim 2 from:
Solms, M. (2018). The Predictive Mind and the Felt Self. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 12, 294. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00294
In it, Solms explores how emotion, prediction, and learning shape our mental development—and how unmet needs give rise to the very feelings that help us grow.