I often mentioned this term and even gave a textbook example of the manifestation of this quality.

In general, there is no high intelligence without its high flexibility.

What is FLEXIBILITY?

It is the ability of a living being to solve problems not only and NOT SO MUCH according to programs prepared in advance by instinct, unconditional or conditioned reflexes, but to quickly change them, based on some new, suddenly arisen conditions.

Talented military leaders often change the battle plan during combat, improvising and usually successfully. This is the flexibility of intelligence!

But not only commanders, this applies to the average soldier too, the flexibility to respond to continuously changing conditions. And it’s not just military leaders who need to be flexible. In any life situation that requires improvisation, it is this quality that often brings victory in solving a problem.

It was precisely the dogmatism and lack of flexibility of Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy’s behavior at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 that led to the defeat of Napoleon’s army.

And the flexibility of I.S. Shklovsky’s intellect provided him with an easy victory in a kind of senseless, like the vast majority of UN forums, an idle talking-shop in Paris (See “Il ne faut pas simplified!”)

And, now, a thought has come about how to explain this at the neurophysiological level, and it’s not just a good idea, but a very successful one, because it connected this flexibility with the explanation I described a long time ago for a synaptic phenomenon in motor neurons, discovered by two neurophysiologists Katz and Fet as early as 1950 and still has NOT been RECEIVED. a reasonable “OFFICIAL” explanation.

(I consider my long-standing explanation to be correct, not because it is “mine”, but because it really immediately explains many things naturally and fits “coincidentally” into the general structure of the mechanisms of neurophysiology. But it is by NO means “official”, since it has not been published anywhere in a scientific journal and has never received any evaluation from “experts”.)

So, this phenomenon is called SSSA – Spontaneous Subthreshold Synaptic Activity. Katz and Fet discovered, purely by chance, that a small amount of the neurotransmitter acertyl choline is released into the contacts (synapses, more precisely, into the synaptic cleft) of motor axons once a second, INSUFFICIENT (subthreshold) to “trigger” the contact. He named it correctly at first, roughly, as I call it, and then, changing his scientific intuition, they renamed it into “Miniature Potentials” and so they became fixed in scientific terminology. The name is not just ridiculous, superficial, but HARMFUL in meaning, leading away from the correct path of interpretation of the phenomenon.

I have given this effect an additional TARGET name, “Readiness Chains.”

The meaning is simple:

There are certain organs in the body that MUST BE in constant readiness to be triggered. For example, muscles are innervated by so-called “motor” neurons and axons. Because life is often unpredictable, and therefore the evolutionary division of the innervation of organs into fast and slow-acting ones has occurred in the nervous system. For the most part, muscles are fast–acting membranes, and therefore the nervous pathways to their excitation must be in a state of constant READINESS for action. These are the Subthreshold Contacts that ensure this readiness for sudden activation.

But my idea had a continuation on mental activity. It also has such neural circuits of readiness – instincts and unconditional and conditioned reflexes. Remembering-forgetting is also related to them.

If the chain of memories is often triggered (Repetitio est mater studiorum), then the readiness remains there. We remember!

And if it is rare, then the SSSA STOPS there and the chain loses its readiness. Forget it!

By the way, the emotional “coloring” of memories often provides this very readiness, supports the SSSA, whereas an indifferent attitude to something QUICKLY breaks such a chain of readiness.

All this is directly related to the flexibility of intelligence! It is the PRESENCE OF MANY SUCH FREE CHAINS OF READINESS to create A NEW, unusual, but adequate to the situation and logic, ORIGINAL chain of neural connections that PROVIDES THE NECESSARY FLEXIBILITY OF INTELLIGENCE!

That’s how, unexpectedly for me, the “mysterious” flexibility of thinking suddenly got an explanation in the old idea of Spontaneous Subthreshold Synaptic Activity!

Faciant meliora potentes.

If I’m wrong, let my seniors correct me.

3 I 2026