Mind Archives - Page 26 of 31

Move It!

March 13, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

Take a hike. Climb some flights of stairs. Lace up your sneakers and head out for a walk, run, or bike ride. Learn how to dance. Pump some iron. Complete a circuit workout at the gym.

Everyone knows that physical exercise is good for the body, and now we know it’s just as good for the brain. A number of studies over the past 10 years have demonstrated how important exercise—especially the aerobic kind—is in regard to both cognitive function and memory.

Brain shrinkage, especially shrinkage of the hippocampus, is associated with memory loss, decreased cognitive functioning, Alzheimer Disease, and dementia. As one witty reporter on the subject said, “at least as it relates to the hippocampus, size does matter.”

But brain shrinkage is not an inevitable function of aging. Regular aerobic exercise has been shown to increase the size of the hippocampus by generating new nerve cells (a process called neurogenesis). The more exercise you engage in as a young or midlife adult, the less brain shrinkage you will have to make up for when you are older. But aerobic exercise can trigger neurogenesis at any age or stage of life.

Aerobic exercise gets your heart to pump more oxygen to your brain and initiates your body’s release of hormones that contribute to the growth of brain cells. Not only can you grow new brain cells as a result of exercise, you can also create new connections between them, thereby increasing your brain’s plasticity.

Working memory, planning and scheduling (managing time and attention), multitasking, switching focus, and dealing with ambiguity are some of the functions of an area of the brain known as the executive center. For many people, executive center functions are adversely affected with age. The great news is that these are the very functions that benefit most from regular physical exercise.

Exercise provides short-term benefits, too—as in right now. Twenty minutes of aerobic exercise can immediately improve your cognitive functioning. To enhance the effects, do something that also requires coordination or strategy, such as dancing, playing a game, or ice skating.

It isn’t only aerobic exercise that provides these cognitive benefits. A recent study indicates that yoga may be even better at sharpening the mind. The sample for this study was small, but the results are intriguing. If they can be replicated in other studies, this would be great news for people who can’t–or don’t want to–engage in vigorous physical exercise.

Recent research published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology shows how inactivity also alters the brain, but not in a good way. This is your brain. This is your brain on the couch.

Physical exercise is “neuroprotective” for your brain no matter how old you are–and maybe even no matter what kind of exercise you do. It’s never too late—or too soon—to move it for your brain’s sake.

Exercise Your Veto Power

March 10, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

truck under lake — (Photo credit: Never Photo)

The unconscious part of the brain—also called the subliminal brain or System 1—is a much faster processor and reactor than the comparatively plodding conscious part of the brain—the only part of the brain we’re aware of. The unconscious responds quickly, automatically, and without thought. This often works to our advantage. I once found my foot slamming on my car’s brake before I was even aware that a speeding pickup truck outside my line of sight was about to run its red light.

Had my unconscious brain not reacted as quickly as it did, I would have been in the middle of the intersection at the same time as the truck. The conscious part of my brain needed a lot more time to process all the information. I didn’t fully grasp what was happening until after the pickup ran the red light, the driver recognized the near miss, and the truck came to a screeching stop at the shoulder of the road on the other side of the intersection.

In a situation like that, stopping to think through what to do could have proven fatal.

Most of us don’t find ourselves in life-threatening circumstances on a regular basis. But the unconscious brain reacts or responds just as quickly in our ordinary, everyday situations. It is notorious for jumping to conclusions. And in many cases, the unconscious response, reaction, or conclusion isn’t the most accurate or appropriate one. Those are the times when it pays to slow down, consider what the best response might be, and make a conscious choice. We can choose to go with the flow and accept the initial reaction or impulse generated by our unconscious. Or we can exercise our veto power and choose a different response.

A participant in one of the courses I teach came up with the acronym STOP. When she notices herself engaging in automatic behavior, she reminds herself to Stop, Think, Observe, and then Proceed.

We can’t prevent the unconscious from doing its thing—and we definitely wouldn’t want to. But learning when to trust it and when to STOP and exercise our veto power can help us avoid doing and saying many things we might later wish we hadn’t.

I Think; Therefore, I Pay Little Attention to What I Do*

March 6, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

We know other people based on what they do. How else could we know them? And we infer all kinds of things about them from their behavior—especially from their habitual behavior.

Say someone you know is routinely late, and his lateness affects you. He may be full of apologies each and every time. He may have reasons to offer up to explain his lateness. He may claim he really, really wanted to be on time—and that may really be true.

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. –Carl Jung

You can’t know for sure what he’s thinking, though; you can only know for sure what he does. And it will be next to impossible for you not to draw some conclusions about him based on his behavior. Such as:

He’s disorganized.
He’s inconsiderate.
He has a poor sense of time.
He’s self-centered.

You’d likely dismiss your friend’s vigorous insistence that he intended to be on time. Actions, you might be inclined to say, speak louder than words—or well-meant intentions.

Put the shoe on the other foot, however, and the story takes an interesting turn. When it comes to our own behavior, we’re more likely to expect others to take into consideration not just what we do, but also what we intended to do (or, in some cases, what we would have intended if we’d actually put any thought into it). In fact, we expect others to accept our intentions as being even more important—and indicative of who we are—than our actions. It’s the thought that counts, right?

All of us tend to grant much more significance to what we think, intend, plan, and wish for than to what we do. So if what we do misses the mark or doesn’t live up to our or someone else’s expectations, it’s entirely too easy for us to write off the behavior, dismiss it, or excuse it. That isn’t the real me. It doesn’t reflect who I am. It’s just something I do.

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. –John Locke

What we do says quite a lot about who we are—if not to us (because we’re not paying attention)—to other people. Other people are inferring things about us based on our behavior just as we’re inferring things about them based on theirs. If we recognize that what we do tells others who we are, we don’t have to expect them to try to read our minds in order to understand us. Of course, that means we need to pay more attention to what we do—as well as to what we say we’ll do.

*Slight apologies to Rene Descartes.

Data’s Cat

February 27, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. –Muriel Rukeyser

There is a world of atoms (the physical world or so-called objective reality). But that’s not the world we inhabit. It isn’t even possible for us to inhabit that world—at least not directly.

Even if all our senses are intact and our brain is functioning normally, we do not have direct access to the physical world. It may feel as if we have direct access, but this is an illusion created by our brain. –Chris Frith, Professor in Neuropsychology, University College London

And…

Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what’s in front of you. –David Eagleman, Incognito

The world we actually inhabit is made up of the stories we construct about the objects, events, and people in the physical world. Our stories are based on our impressions and perceptions of what’s out there. The problem is that we treat our impressions and perceptions—and the stories based on them—as if they are real and true.

The world of atoms constantly impacts us. And as it does, we are constantly interpreting, explaining, and assigning meaning to what happens. From moment-to-moment, we’re not aware of how much we don’t know, how much we’re missing, and how much high-speed processing our unconscious brain is doing to generate our impressions and perceptions.

We’re not robots or androids, nor would most of us choose to be. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lieutenant Commander Data was an android who inhabited the physical world and not the world of stories. He was superior to humans in a number of different ways. He didn’t make the kinds of mistakes people often make. Yet after spending time with humans, he opted to have an “emotion chip” installed so he could be more like us. He got a pet, an orange cat named Spot (who had no spots). There’s no logical reason to have a cat when you live on board a spaceship. Data’s cat signaled his entrance into the very human world of stories.

All of us, both individually and collectively, are driven to create and tell stories about our experience and then to believe that our stories represent reality. It’s how we make sense of life. The consequences can be amazing, amusing, or devastating. But whether our stories are good or bad, as long as we don’t recognize them for what they are, we’re imprisoned by them.

Not Dead Yet

February 24, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Most of us, at one time or another (or maybe even incessantly), want to know why we are the way we are. Why do we do the things we do, think the way we think, and feel the things we feel. But wanting to know doesn’t mean we can know. And trying to come up with answers is a seductive but futile pursuit.

The unconscious brain, which drives this deep desire to know, is a pattern-detector and connection-maker. Sometimes the patterns it sees and the connections it makes are useful, such as in scientific or creative pursuits (or even in helping us remember where we put something). But the unconscious brain just as often sees patterns and makes connections where none exist. It’s notorious for jumping to conclusions.

The conscious part of the brain gets to accept or reject the connection offered up by the unconscious. If the conscious part of the brain (what we think of as “I”) accepts it, our brain turns that potential connection into a real one and sort of cements it into place. Now we have an explanation. Now we know that this caused that: some event, situation, or experience that happened in the past is the reason why we do, think, or feel some particular thing today.

Chances are considerably better than average that we’re wrong. There are far too many factors that have gone into making us who we are, the majority of which we aren’t even aware of. But even if we somehow did manage to figure it out correctly, so what?

There’s not much power in reasons or explanations. In fact the more reasons we come up with to explain why we are the way we are today, the less power we have. The more we insist on being nothing more than the effect of hundreds of thousands of causes, the less freedom we have to be, do, think, or feel anything different.

It’s as if we’re trying to replace our actual fluid and dynamic selves with stone replicas of ourselves. Instead of being here now, fully present, we’re busy trying to explain how we got here. Instead of trying to live, we’re trying to not-live. All of us will be cold and hard as stone soon enough. Let’s not hasten the embalming process while we’re still breathing.

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