Blog on mind and brain research and advice

Why Aren’t You Constantly Surprised?

January 29, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

You’ve probably never asked yourself that question, but it’s not as silly as it sounds. Think about it for a minute. How do you explain the fact that you aren’t constantly surprised by the wide variety of events, situations, and reactions you encounter?

The answer to that question also explains why it can’t possibly be true that “you always have a choice.”

Your brain is predictive, rather than reactive.

Until fairly recently, the commonly held belief was that the brain merely reacted to sensations it picked up, primarily from the outside world. The idea was that many of the brain’s neurons were dormant most of the time until they were stimulated by a sight or a sound.

But that is not the case. Neurons are constantly firing, interacting and stimulating each other at various rates. According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University:

This brain activity represents millions of predictions of what you will encounter next in the world, based on your lifetime of past experience.

Your reactions are your body adjusting to the predictions your brain makes based on the state your body was in the last time it was in a similar situation.

Your brain is trying to put together thoughts, feelings, and perceptions so they arrive as needed, not a second afterward.

This activity does not take place at the conscious (System 2) level, but at the unconscious (System 1) level, which processes 11 million bits of information at a time. What you become aware of (thoughts, feelings, impulses, etc.) are the results of this unconscious processing. And you’re only aware of what your brain thinks you need to know, when you need to know it.

Furthermore, according to an article by a trio of neuroscientists published in Frontiers in Psychology:

Your brain generates multiple possible representations of what to expect in the environment. The representation with the smallest prediction error is selected.

However the generation of representations is constrained by what is stored in memory and by the sampling of the environment.

Another way to think about it is that these representations of what to expect are constrained by your mental model (see: Are You Thinking Outside the Box Yet?). Your brain constantly updates your mental model based on the accuracy of its predictions—as well as on its own agenda. Again, this occurs outside your conscious awareness.

Barrett provides this example:

You’re interacting with a friend and, based on context, your brain predicts that she will smile. This prediction drives your motor neurons to move your mouth in advance to smile back, and your movement causes your friend’s brain to issue new predictions and actions, back and forth, in a dance of prediction and action. If predictions are wrong, your brain has mechanisms to correct them and issue new ones.

The unconscious part of the brain is always several steps ahead of the conscious part. As both Barrett and neuroscientist David Eagleman have pointed out, this is what makes activities such as sports possible. If the brain was reactive, rather than predictive, it wouldn’t operate fast enough to enable you to hit a baseball or block a goal.

A merely reactive brain wouldn’t have helped Michael Phelps win his 10^th gold medal while swimming blind as a result of his goggles filling with water. All of his previous practice, experience, and knowledge gave his brain a solid basis for predicting what he needed to do in order to win. Pretty amazing.

Because your brain is predictive:

You are not constantly surprised.
You don’t always have a choice.
You are able to engage in activities that require quick and accurate responses.
You are capable of learning from your experiences.
You don’t have to think about every little thing you do in the course of a day.
You find it difficult to change undesirable habits.
You may be tricked by various types of illusions.
You are unaware of your visual blind spot.

Our primary contact with the world, all this suggests, is via our expectations about what we are about to see or experience. —Andy Clark, philosopher and cognitive scientist, University of Edinburgh

When you are surprised, it’s because your brain encounters unpredictable stimuli: something other than what it expected. Unpredictable stimuli require conscious (System 2) processing. To get a sense of this in action, take note of the occasions when you experience surprise and try to compare your actual experience to the experience your brain might have been expecting.

The fact that you are not, in fact, constantly surprised means that your brain is pretty darn good at making predictions the vast majority of the time.

Uncertainty: Learning to Live with Butterflies

January 22, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The unconscious part of our brain abhors ambiguity and uncertainty. And patience is not its middle name. That’s unfortunate.

We work to eliminate as much uncertainty as we can as quickly as possible. But when we eliminate uncertainty, we necessarily eliminate novelty. And novelty is the starting point for creation and innovation. In eliminating uncertainty, we kill our shot at brilliance. We become derivative. All in the name of not having to learn to live with butterflies. —Jonathan Fields

In our haste to return to the illusory state of certainty, we tend to do things like jump to conclusions, accept the first answer or explanation that comes to mind (consistent with our mental model), act prematurely, or immobilize ourselves in endless rounds of rumination. (Rumination feels like problem-solving but it’s the opposite: problem-prolonging, if you will.)

By refusing to allow ourselves to simply observe the discomfort that accompanies ambiguity and uncertainty, we often deny ourselves another experience: the pure joy of the aha! moment when a solution presents itself. That may take an hour or several days—or even longer—but suddenly what was murky and inchoate becomes bright and clear. The path ahead becomes obvious.

I say the solution “presents itself” because although we tend to take credit for coming up with the brilliant idea or flash of insight, the part of our brain we identify with had little to do with it. It’s the unconscious that figured it out and then clued us in.

It’s interesting that the unconscious is equally capable of jumping to quick conclusions and of wrestling with an issue long after we’ve depleted our conscious capacity to think about it. In situations where a wrong conclusion isn’t likely to make a huge difference, jumping to one is probably more efficient. But when the issue or problem or project is bigger, it’s worth letting the unconscious mull it over for a while.

One of the reasons waiting this process out makes us squirm is that we have no control over it. It isn’t going to occur by the force of our will or on our timetable. When we try to make it happen we usually just end up getting in our own way and muddling the process.

Certainty Is Not Clarity

Although we frequently use the terms interchangeably, certainty is not a synonym for clarity.

Certainty itself is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you are wrong. –Steven Stosny, Ph.D.

There’s a big difference between being unclear—not knowing which step to take—and being uncertain—not knowing what the outcome of taking that step will be. It’s important to distinguish between the two and to be able to recognize whether it’s a lack of clarity or the fear of uncertainty that’s getting in the way.

Certainty is an illusion—a somewhat comforting illusion, but an illusion nevertheless. There’s no way to predict the future, and randomness plays a much bigger role in our lives than we want to believe. So if we wait until we are certain of the outcome of our actions, we’ll never act because the outcome can never be certain. There are no guarantees in life.

The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry. —Robert Burns

Clarity, unlike certainty, is not an emotional state. It’s a state of mind: unclouded, unobstructed, unambiguous. Clarity isn’t arrived at via a tortuous route. Unfortunately, since the unconscious part of our brain is biased against uncertainty, we are biased against it, too. This is another example of our brain using us instead of the other way around.

What you can do:

Practice tolerating uncertainty and not being attached to the outcome by adopting an attitude of curiosity.
Learn to distinguish between being unclear (not knowing which step to take) and being uncertain (not knowing what the outcome of taking that step will be).

It isn’t easy, but rather than trying to get back to comfortable and certain as quickly as possible, we can develop a tolerance for the discomfort. We can even learn to appreciate the uncertainty and the opportunity it presents for novelty. Whatever is on the other side of our current distress may be unimaginable to us now, but it could be brilliant. Why take the chance of missing out on something brilliant just to avoid feeling a little uncomfortable?

Additional reading: 12 Signs that You Lack Clarity

To Improve Your Brain, Exercise Your Body

January 15, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Sitting in front of a computer screen to play brain games is not the best way to enhance or maintain your cognitive abilities. First of all it doesn’t really work. And second, it involves sitting. Standing is only marginally better. (And playing brain games on a portable electronic device while walking is just an accident waiting to happen.)

As John Medina writes in Brain Rules:

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion.

The links between physical exercise and brain health have been getting a lot of attention lately. Here are summaries of some of the research with links to the articles (click on the titles). The last two of these studies were included in my post last fall on Five Ways to Improve Your Brain; the first three are more recent.

Get Moving

A neuroscientist (Wendy A. Suzuki) says there are powerful benefits to exercise that are rarely discussed.

When I was about to turn 40, I started working out regularly after years of inactivity. As I sweated my way through cardio, weights, and dance classes, I noticed that exercise wasn’t just changing my body. It was also profoundly transforming my brain—for the better.

The immediate effects of exercise on my mood and thought process proved to be a powerful motivational tool. And as a neuroscientist and workout devotee, I’ve come to believe that these neurological benefits could have profound implications for how we live, learn and age as a society.

Exercise combats stress.
Increased levels of physical exercise can result in improved memory
Exercise improves our ability to shift and focus attention.
Exercise could help students better absorb everything from history lessons to chemistry experiments–and they’d be happier too.
Exercise could make students more imaginative at school and adults more creative at work.
The longer and more regularly you exercise through your life, the lower your chances are of suffering from cognitive decline and dementia as you age.

Do… build your body

We often make a distinction between brains and brawn. In fact, getting in shape is one of the surest ways to build your mind. Physical activity not only establishes a better blood flow to the brain; it also triggers a surge of proteins such as “nerve growth factor” that can help stimulate the growth and maintenance of neural connections in the brain.

The benefits seem to stretch from cradle to grave: children who walk to school get better grades, while taking a leisurely stroll seemed to boost pensioner’s concentration and memory. What’s more, a wide variety of exercises can help, from gentle aerobic exercise to weight training and body building; just choose a training regime that suits your current fitness.

Study suggests physical activity makes it easier for the brain to change

Learning, memory, and brain repair depend on the ability of our neurons to change with experience. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 7 have evidence from a small study in people that exercise may enhance this essential plasticity of the adult brain.

The findings focused on the visual cortex come as hopeful news for people with conditions including amblyopia (sometimes called lazy eye), traumatic brain injury, and more, the researchers say.

“We provide the first demonstration that moderate levels of physical activity enhance neuroplasticity in the visual cortex of adult humans,” says Claudia Lunghi of the University of Pisa in Italy.

“By showing that moderate levels of physical activity can boost the plastic potential of the adult visual cortex, our results pave the way to the development of non-invasive therapeutic strategies exploiting the intrinsic brain plasticity in adult subjects,” she adds.

While further study is needed, the researchers think that this effect may result from a decrease with exercise in an inhibitory neurotransmitter called GABA. As concentrations of this inhibitory nerve messenger decline, the brain becomes more responsive.

Regardless of the mechanism, the findings suggest that exercise plays an important role in brain health and recovery. They come as especially good news for people with amblyopia, which is generally considered to be untreatable in adults.

“Our study suggests that physical activity, which is also beneficial for the general health of the patient, could be used to increase the efficiency of the treatment in adult patients,” Lunghi says.

Lifting weights, twice a week, may aid the brain

Most studies of exercise and brain health have focused on the effects of running, walking or other aerobic activities. A few encouraging past studies have suggested that regular, moderate aerobic exercise such as walking may slow the progression of white matter lesions in older people.

But Teresa Liu-Ambrose, a professor of physical therapy and director of the Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, wondered whether other types of exercise would likewise be beneficial for white matter. In particular, she was interested in weight training, because weight training strengthens and builds muscles.

After a year-long study, women aged 65-75 who had lifted weights twice per week displayed significantly less shrinkage and tattering of their white matter than the other women. Their lesions had grown and multiplied somewhat, but not nearly as much. They also walked more quickly and smoothly than the women in the other two groups.

Note that the result was only achieved in the group who lifted weights twice per week, not in a group who lifted only once a week.

Regular exercise changes the brain to improve memory, thinking skills

In a study done at the University of British Columbia, researchers found that regular aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, appears to boost the size of the hippocampus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning. Resistance training, balance and muscle toning exercises did not have the same results.

Many studies have suggested that the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory (the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal cortex) have greater volume in people who exercise versus people who don’t. “Even more exciting is the finding that engaging in a program of regular exercise of moderate intensity over six months or a year is associated with an increase in the volume of selected brain regions,” says Dr. Scott McGinnis, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

How much exercise is required? The study participants walked briskly for one hour, twice a week. That’s 120 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week. Standard recommendations advise half an hour of moderate physical activity most days of the week, or 150 minutes a week. If that seems daunting, start with a few minutes a day, and increase the amount you exercise by five or 10 minutes every week until you reach your goal.

If you don’t want to walk, consider other moderate-intensity exercises, such as swimming, stair climbing, tennis, squash, or dancing. Don’t forget that household activities can count as well, such as intense floor mopping, raking leaves, or anything that gets your heart pumping so much that you break out in a light sweat.

The Seductive Lure of Online Brain Games

January 8, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

You may have heard that Lumosity has agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission to the tune of $2 million in response to charges of deceptive advertising:

The FTC alleges that the defendants claimed training with Lumosity would 1) improve performance on everyday tasks, in school, at work, and in athletics; 2) delay age-related cognitive decline and protect against mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease; and 3) reduce cognitive impairment associated with health conditions, including stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, ADHD, the side effects of chemotherapy, and Turner syndrome, and that scientific studies proved these benefits.

This didn’t surprise me since I’ve been following various researchers’ attempts to substantiate the many claims made by such companies. I was also aware that in 2014, a group of 70 cognitive scientists and neuroscientists issued a statement warning consumers of the hype over brain games:

We object to the claim that brain games offer consumers a scientifically grounded avenue to reduce or reverse cognitive decline when there is no compelling scientific evidence to date that they do. The promise of a magic bullet detracts from the best evidence to date, which is that cognitive health in old age reflects the long-term effects of healthy, engaged lifestyles. In the judgment of the signatories below, exaggerated and misleading claims exploit the anxieties of older adults about impending cognitive decline. We encourage continued careful research and validation in this field.

A large percentage of the population is concerned about cognitive decline. And they’re willing to pay for what appears to be an easy and even enjoyable quick fix. Quick fixes have become increasingly desirable in the internet age, so the concept of using your electronic device to play games devised by someone else to keep your brain in top form is brilliant marketing, if nothing else. It’s a mini, no-stress, workout for your brain.

The jury is still out as to whether brain games offer any long-term effectiveness. One thing that is known is that improving your performance in a particular game leads to improved performance in that particular game. In that regard, computerized games are no different from playing Scrabble or working crossword or Sudoku puzzles. The more crossword puzzles you work, the better you get at working crossword puzzles. The more Sudoku puzzles you complete, the easier the “challenging” puzzles become. That’s just how the brain works. The more often you attempt any task, the quicker and easier it is to do it. Practice may not make perfect but it definitely makes better.

According to David Z. Hambrick, associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University:

[I]f you find that people get better in one test of reasoning, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re smart; it means they’re better on one test of reasoning.

In fact, there’s some indication that just playing video games is better than so-called brain games at improving short-term memory capacity and reasoning.

If you like the experience of playing—and getting better at—computerized brain games (and paying for the pleasure), then go ahead and continue doing it. But computerized brain games are unlikely to have any far-reaching or long-term effects on your cognitive abilities.

And, as an article in Scientific American points out, they take up time that could be put to better use. I’ve been saying for some time now that the two things you can do to grow new neurons and increase the number of synaptic connections in your brain (thus expanding your mental model and your cognitive abilities) are:

Move! Engage in physical exercise.
Learn! Study something new and challenging.

That’s it. Do those two things every day and you will not only be doing something effective to forestall cognitive decline, you will also become healthier and potentially even higher-functioning than you already are.

2016: The Year of Clearing Space?

January 1, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

You can’t reach for the stars by climbing that mountain of clutter.

That’s what I wrote two years ago (2014: Time to Start Shoveling?) and I stand by it today. There are plenty of obstacles you’ll encounter in your life that you have no control over.

Clutter is a major obstacle, but it’s one you can do something about.

In fact successfully dealing with clutter, if it’s an issue for you, can actually boost your ability to deal with those other obstacles.

Not sure if clutter’s an issue? Here are some questions to ask yourself.

How much stuff are you holding onto because you might need it someday?
How much stuff are you holding onto because it has financial value or “might be” valuable?
How much stuff are you holding onto because it has sentimental value? Just how much of your past are you curating?
How much stuff are you holding onto simply because it’s already there?
How much stuff might you be holding onto that you don’t even know you have?
How many items of clothing or pairs of shoes do you have that you no longer wear—or that don’t even belong to you?
How many drawers, cabinets, closets, countertops, and shelves are so full you can’t fit anything else in or on them?
How much work do you have to do before you can clean your living or work space?
How much time do you spend looking for things?
Have you ever failed to respond to something in a timely manner because you lost track of the paperwork?
How much of your stuff needs to be repaired, refinished, repurposed, or recycled?
How often do you notice something in your living or work space and think “I really need to do something about that”?
Have you ever panicked at the thought of someone coming into your home and seeing the mess?
Conversely, have you ever said, “You think your place is bad, you should see mine”?
How many times have you gotten everything in one area completely tidy and organized only to find the clutter slowly creeping back months, weeks, or even days later?

My interest in clutter and having too much stuff (the two often go together) is related to the effect hey have on the brain. Clutter tends to snag your attention on a regular basis and in dozens of different ways. You don’t have an unlimited amount of System 2 (conscious) attention. How much of it are you letting your stuff siphon off? Wouldn’t you rather use your System 2 attention for something more productive or at least more interesting?

Having so much stuff that every space or place is filled or overflowing can have another dampening effect by keeping you stuck instead of allowing you to move on and explore other interests. Have you ever decided not to take up a new hobby, for example, because you have no space for the materials or the activity due to the fact that you’re storing a bunch of stuff you no longer use?

Clutter falls into different categories: physical/material, mental, emotional, and the hodgepodge of things left undone and/or not being attended to. But all of it has the same effect. So whatever it is:

Clean it out
Fix it
Address it
Replace it
Finish it
Toss it out

The best thing you can do for yourself in 2016 is to make it The Year of Clearing Space. You have no idea what you’ll be able to see once you get all that clutter out of your way.