On the afternoon of December 9, Deng Zhu, Dean of the Psychology College, was invited by the Professional Union of Psychology in the Honors College to give an academic lecture entitled “Redefining thinking: the entropy dissipation of information processing in the cerebral cortex". The lecture was presided over by Yao Shiming, the leader of the professional union. All members of the professional union and all students of the college attended the lecture.

Firstly, starting from the definition, Dean Deng explained the positioning and the research direction of "psychology". Then, he raised a question to the students: what is "self"? Then the topic of this lecture was brought out: why we need to redefine thinking? Deng pointed out, people often say that education and examination are to cultivate and test students' thinking ability. But thinking is often confused with memory. The current form of education emphasizes remembering what the teacher said, but neglects why, what and how to use it. Extraction should be supplemented by thinking. For students, although they have experienced such educational concepts and models in the past decades, they should rethink and form a new and more perfect thinking and learning concept after they enter the university.

How to redefine thinking? According to Deng, the definition of thinking should start from the area where thinking is generated. That is, the extensive area of fully connected and highly complex neocortical multilayer neural network. Reliable thinking, first of all, depends on the reliability, appropriateness and structure of input. We should establish our own cognitive schema and construct our own knowledge system. The stimulation of new input should be incorporated into the existing knowledge system. On the other hand, reliable thinking also needs correctness, activation and the structure of brain information. Only by storing the correct information in the brain can we ensure that it is intact when it needs to be extracted.

Students, on one hand, should accumulate appearances and perceive the world in life. "Read ten thousand books, travel ten thousand miles". Without enough sense input, we will only become the slave of knowledge, which will lead to the early symbolization of thinking. On the other hand, we should develop intelligence, solve real problems and learn to apply knowledge to practice. "It's only a matter of knowing how to using it."

Thinking is formed in the process of interaction with the world and is also a kind of construction. Finally, Dean Deng encouraged everyone to think actively, go out of books, and face the world with a more detached attitude. Try to be a dialectical-thinking, rational and mature person.