Blog on mind and brain research and advice

Breaking those Synaptic Connections

April 18, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Some new research indicates that as we age we don’t have a harder time learning new things because we can’t absorb the information but because we can’t forget “the old stuff.” There are two proteins in the brain that play a role in synaptic connections: NR2A and NR2B. NR2B weakens synaptic connections, essentially creating “space” for new ones to be formed. NR2A inhibits the process. Before puberty, our brains produce more NR2B than NR2A; adult brains produce more NR2A and less NR2B. When it comes to learning, it’s just as important for our brains to be able to weaken synaptic connections as it is for them to be able to strengthen new ones. A year or two ago, I remember reading about a study suggesting that one of the purposes of sleep was to “prune” some of the brain’s synaptic connections. Recently, SF Gate ran an article linking brain deterioration and sleep woes, although with a different slant:

After comparing the brains and memory skills of young study participants and older subjects, researchers found that age-related brain deterioration contributes to poor sleep and, in turn, recollection problems.

The article goes on to say that poor sleep then contributes to brain deterioration, creating a downward spiral. It doesn’t say anything about NR2A and NR2B but attributes the brain deterioration that results from poor sleep to a reduction in the amount of long-wave sleep. Whatever the mechanism, sleep seems to be pretty important to our ability to learn, especially as we get older.

Processing Regret

Mental (psychological) health and brain health are not identical, but they go hand-in-hand in many cases, to some extent because of the brain’s plasticity. Forgive and forget is an old adage that may now be scientifically validated. One of the things we may have difficulty forgetting are thoughts and feelings of regret over events from the past, either losses or missed opportunities—which represent a different kind of loss. How our brains “process regret” (read article) is a factor in our mental health. When our brains actively mitigate our experience of loss, we are much less likely to experience ongoing regret over them. Learning to let go turns out to be good advice. Another way to visualize it is breaking the synaptic connections of regret.

To Wander or Not to Wander, Is That the Question?

April 14, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

A few years ago, a study by Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth made headlines—at least in the cognitive neuroscience world—by reporting two findings. One is that people tend to zone out nearly 50% of the time. The other is that “a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

It should be noted that Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, specializes in affective forecasting—the ability to predict how people will feel in the future. He is the author of Stumbling on Happiness, which demonstrates that we actually have no idea how we’ll feel in the future, in spite of our firm convictions to the contrary.

Gilbert, then, is interested in studying what makes us happy. His research with Killingsworth consisted of interrupting people multiple times a day to ask them what they were doing and how happy they were when they were doing it. One of the things people reported being unhappy about was mind-wandering. (They reported being happiest when they were making love, exercising, or engaging in conversation.)

It seems that the most consistent response to this study, immediately following expressions of dismay, has been to try to get us to be more “in the moment”—in other words, to practice mindfulness. I’m a big fan of mindfulness, but I think there’s more to mind-wandering than whether or not it makes us happy. As I wrote about in an earlier post, people who pursue meaning in their lives rather than happiness aren’t necessarily happy, either. But they report being more satisfied.

As it turns out there are a few benefits associated with mind-wandering. One is that we can mentally escape from boring or unpleasant tasks or situations. An extreme example of mental escape was described by Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning as to how some prisoners in the concentration camps were able to survive better than others:

Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature. …

The intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his imagination played with past events, often not important ones, but minor happenings and trifling things. His nostalgic memory glorified them and they assumed a strange character….

As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances.

Another benefit of mind-wandering is increased creativity. Neuroscientists have determined that our brains have a “default network” that is activated when our minds are free to wander. When our attention is focused on a task, on the other hand, our executive network is activated to oversee the operation. But sometimes when our minds are wandering both of these networks are active. Jonathan Schooler and Jonathan Smallwood, both of UC Santa Barbara, theorize that both networks are working on agendas beyond the immediate task—which could explain why people whose minds wander score higher on tests of creativity.

Eric Klinger, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota believes mind wandering “serves as a kind of reminder mechanism, thereby increasing the likelihood that other goal pursuits will remain intact and not get lost in the shuffle of pursuing many goals.” According to Dr. Klinger, our mind wandering gives us an evolutionary advantage.

So we probably shouldn’t rush to judgment and try to stop our minds from wandering in an attempt to make ourselves happier. Nor should we give our minds free rein to wander at will. Mind-wandering is something to be aware of. To appreciate. And to curb when it’s more appropriate to focus on the task at hand.

It isn’t as if we could put an end to our mind-wandering, anyway. We just need to learn when to go with the flow and when to direct the flow, which may be one more thing that is easier said than done.

Curiouser and Curiouser

April 11, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

In his book, Waking Up, Charles Tart points out that most people, especially in the West, aren’t taught self-observation skills at an early age. What if we had spent as much time learning how to observe ourselves as we spent learning how to read?

I’m a fanatical reader, so I don’t say this lightly, but maybe self-observation skills are even more valuable than reading skills. In many ways, reading helps open up the outer world to us, but self-observation opens up our own inner world—which is no less vast, really.

These are a few things Tart has to say about self-observation.

It’s All Grist for the Mill

In its most general form, the practice of self-observation is simply a matter of paying attention to everything, noticing whatever happens, being open-mindedly curious about all that is going on. This everything will almost always be a mixture of perceptions of external events and your internal reactions to them. You should drop all a priori beliefs about what you should be interested in, what is important and not important. Whatever is is an appropriate focus for observation.

Three Ways to Pay Attention

This open-minded attention must be more than just intellectual attention. Remember that we are three-brained beings. Thus the attention we should strive to pay to our world and our selves is an emotional attention and a body attention as well as an intellectual attention.

Above All, Be Curious

The practice of self-observation…is the practice of being curious, along with a commitment to do your best to observe and learn whatever is there, regardless of your preferences or fears.

I have to keep reminding myself to stay curious about what is going on around me and within me. And also to stay curious about my own actions and reactions. It’s so much harder for me to get sucked into the drama, the compulsions, and the autopilot behavior when I’m able to maintain an attitude of curiosity about everything that’s happening.

My usual modus operandi is probably the same as everyone else’s. I operate on the assumption that there’s a way things should be and when things are going the way they should be going, all’s well. But more often than not, things do not go the way I think they should. And people do not behave the way I think they should. Even I don’t behave the way I think I should. And don’t get me started on the weather!

As an 8, when things are not going as I expect them to go, my resistance kicks in. That’s a perfect opportunity to wake up and pay attention. When I’m able to do that, I feel much lighter and more expansive. When I don’t or can’t do it, I dig myself deeper into my resistance. No good ever comes of that.

What kicks in for you when things aren’t going your way?

If I want to use the moments when my expectations rub up against the edge of reality to wake up, I have to have the intention to do so.

The practice of self-observation begins with a desire and resolution on your part: “I want to know what really is, regardless of how I prefer things to be.”

As per my previous post, self-observation is not for wimps. It isn’t easy to let go of our preconceived ideas about how the world should work. It’s hard to give up having a temper tantrum when we don’t get our way. Growing up can be painful at times.

If you diligently practice self-observation, you will see much that his painful and much that is joyful, but seeing more of reality will turn out to be highly preferable to living in fantasy. You will begin creating “something” in yourself, a quality, a function, a skill, akin to learning how the controls of your automated airliner work. And you will be pleasantly surprised at how much more there is to life.

Self-Observation Isn’t for Wimps

April 7, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

In order to know ourselves, one of the things we need to be able to do is observe ourselves. But observing ourselves doesn’t come naturally. It isn’t that we lack opportunity, since the object of self-observation is always available. It’s that even if we can detach long enough to engage in the process, we find it difficult to observe any aspect of ourselves—from the most significant to the most trivial—without having an opinion about it.

We like it or dislike it, approve of it or disapprove of it, want to keep it or get rid of it—or get more of it. We find it satisfying (occasionally) or dissatisfying (more often). What we observe puffs us up or deflates us. Not only are we constantly evaluating whatever catches our attention, but the same attribute, behavior, feeling, or thought can be judged acceptable in one instance and unacceptable in another. The criteria we use for our self-evaluations are based in compulsion, so there is no rest for the weary—meaning each of us is just another moving target for self-judgment.

Most of the time, we use our self-observations to identify how and where we need to be fixed, so we can improve ourselves. Alternatively, if we like what we observe, we congratulate ourselves.

I let myself get sucked into helping him again. Damn! I need to learn how to say “no.”
I keep finding excuses not to exercise even though I make plans to do it. I am so lazy.
Gee, I handled that situation pretty calmly this time. I’m getting better.

Self-Judging Machines

It’s an automatic process to move almost instantly from observation to judgment. It happens so quickly and so automatically we usually aren’t aware of it. So our observations just become fodder for the judgments that follow. It’s a vicious cycle.

If we judge something about ourselves negatively, we experience an internal conflict. Staying present to the experience of conflict or dissonance isn’t easy. It’s so hard that almost anything—any kind of activity, even useless activity—is preferable. At least it’s distracting.

But the goal of self-observation is to be able to stay present to what we observe without moving into judgment or trying to change things. Yes, the judgments will inevitably arise, but we can turn the tables by making them fodder for self-observation.

This requires commitment, patience, courage, and a willingness to surrender our overpowering desire to be in control since one of the first things we’re likely to observe is how little control we actually have.

Every now and then, we wake up for a brief instant of clarity and cry out, ‘What the hell is happening here?’ And then we fall back into our semi-conscious state as we continue bumbling about, half asleep at the wheel of our lives. –Lama Surya Das

Meditation and journal writing are both great vehicles for practicing self-observation, even if practiced in short bursts.

(originally posted in Nine Paths; slightly revised)

More than Happy

March 31, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Those who pursue happiness tend to focus on feeling good and getting what they want in the short-term (satisfying drives). Happy people report less stress or worry. Animals can be happy, too. It’s been said that what sets humans apart from the animals is the pursuit of meaning. People who are more focused on meaning than on happiness are invested in something outside themselves. They tend to experience more stress and anxiety than happy people do, but the rub is that even when they are suffering, the people who have created meaning in their lives report a higher level of satisfaction than those who don’t have meaning in their lives.

Whether we aim for short-term rewards or keep our eyes on the long-term prize, all of us have two different decision-making systems, both of which are involved each time we have to make a decision or choice. System 1, which is more primitive, is associated with immediate gratification. It responds to sensory stimuli and directly involves the limbic system and our basic emotions. System 2 involves the prefrontal cortex and is responsible for long-range thinking and planning.

The Rowdy Couple Downstairs

Think of the brain as a two-story bungalow. The bottom or first floor got built first and contains a young and rowdy couple. They play loud music, throw wild parties and are up at all hours. Later a second-story extension got built on top and an older and more practical couple moved in. They like to tend the garden and pay off their mortgage. At times, the two couples agree about how the household should be run but, with such differences in values, there are plenty of disagreements. –Piers Steel, Ph.D.

If you don’t have something meaningful on which you are focused, most of your decisions are likely to be in the hands of the rowdy couple on the first floor. Even if you decide there’s something you want that requires foregoing immediate gratification, you may struggle with following through.

The reality is that even though so many people are in pursuit of it—especially in places like the U.S.—happiness can be elusive. For one thing, happiness is an emotion, and by its nature, transient. For another pursuing personal happiness is associated with selfishness and being a “taker,” while pursuing or creating meaning is associated with being a “giver.”

If you focus on creating meaning in your life, you are likely to be more satisfied. Happiness may or may not be a byproduct. If you focus on pursuing happiness, you will presumably be happy, but less satisfied. If it’s the pursuit of meaning that makes us uniquely human, then pursing happiness doesn’t seem like the best path for humans to be on.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” –Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning