The Astonishing Functions of the Brain.
Dr. David Rock has a refreshing, pragmatic approach in “Your Brain at Work”. He gives tangible tools that can be used to focus better and change the ways we think. I have added a lot of his ideas to my toolbelt in hopes of finding insight in the noisy and chaotic state of my brain which Rock describes as the brain at rest.[1]Understanding how the brain physically works helps me to process why I think the way that I do. Conscious mental energy has a high metabolic cost.[2] I can understand this from my experiences in exercise instructing. When you finish a strenuous activity, the body is depleted of energy, and it needs to be restored through nutrition. This helps me understand how thinking can be so exhausting, its depleting energy. The energy used for one system of the brain can take away from the other.[3] Have you ever heard of Chess Boxing? This is a real thing and a great example of this focused brain energy. You cycle between playing a round of chess and boxing- it’s hilarious how switching between the two shows how multi-tasking brings accuracy down.[4] Rock writes about this “dual task interference” where you can only do one task well at a time.[5]
Prioritizing Focused and Alert Thinking
Rock tells the importance of prioritizing, and the complexity involved in doing so. Prioritizing is hard because you visualize a picture you have not yet seen and you must navigate the concepts without any direct experience.[6] Our stage (prefrontal cortex thinking) can only have so many actors (information that has your attention) on it at a time.[7] This creates competition in our brain’s circuits to form the best visual awareness.[8]Rock recommends simplifying by reducing complex ideas into their core elements and breaking thoughts into smaller chunks to more easily process.[9]
Saying no to external and internal distraction is mentally expensive, especially as the Anterior Cingulate Cortex acts as a reflex to anything unusual or unexpected.[10] We have the ability to choose if we act on these impulses by inhibiting behaviors or reactions quickly.[11] Doing this hard work in my brain allows me to get past road blocks to solving problems and into gaining insight.[12] This insight creates new pathways to find solutions[13]. Beeman’s research found that insight comes to those who are most aware of their own thinking.[14] Increasing insight can come through awareness (light focus on an impasse), reflection (reflect on your mental processes), insight (burst of gamma wave in the brain when “things change”) and action (harnessing the energy released through the insight), which Rock calls the ARIA model.[15]
Emotional Regulation Under Stress
My work environment fosters distraction, stress and uncertainty, which encourages me to apply Rock’s tools to emotionally regulate. Drama is the right word for what happens at the supportive women’s home I work at. Many of the women are coming out of homeless and all are coming with trauma. The uncertainty of meeting basic needs causes anxiety.[16] The inability to predict what will happen or not having the complete picture feels like a threat to their lives.[17] This puts them in an away state to minimize danger and is an intense emotional response.[18] Many of these women expect assault or exploitation because that has been their experience on the streets. They experience lack of control and autonomy, feeling powerless to do anything about their situation.[19]
The Limbic system is triggered in emotional response, and metabolic resources are reduced for prefrontal cortex thinking. This idea is reminiscent of Kahneman’s System 1 and 2,[20] The limbic system is the emotional relationship to thoughts, people and events.[21] The women could be helped to process their emotional reaction by symbolic labeling which encourages them to find the right words to explain their emotional sensations.[22] Cognitive reappraisal can be an effective tool to active the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and reduce activity in the Limbic system.[23] The mental work to reframe the situation in a different way can change perspective and give back control over how they interpret the situation.[24] To give the women autonomy where they have the ability to choose is empowering to them.
SCARF to Change Your Brain
Our brains are social, and safe connections are a primary need.[25] Our brains have mirror neurons that light up when we interact with others to understand their intentions, motives and emotion, giving more empathetic interaction.[26] SCARF is an acronym for 5 social domains which describes our primary social rewards or threats to our brain.[27] Status is our place in the social order. Certainty is the ability to predict what will happen. Autonomy is having control or choices. Relatedness is our safe connection to people.[28] and fairness is acting ethically and appropriately to others.[29] The principles in SCARF can be used to change our own brains. The best way to transform our brains long term is quality and quantity of attention paid, or attention density, to deepen new circuits we’ve built.[30]
Tania Singer’s study on fairness and empathy found that women share the pain of both the good guy and the jerk who gets a shock, where men share the pain of only the good guy.[31] This fascinating result led me to look more into her work. I was glad to be introduced to Singer- she has done a lot of work on empathy and social behavior as well as developing caring economics.[32] I’ve added a few of her studies to my research list because they can give me insight into my NPO on women in poverty.
[1] Rock, David. Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long (New York, NY: Harper Business, 2009), vii. 226
[2] Rock, 8
[3] Rock, 9
[4] Rock, 37
[5] Rock, 35
[6] Rock, 13
[7] Rock, 20-21
[8] Rock, 23-4
[9] Rock, 25-6
[10] Rock, 49-51
[11] Rock, 55
[12] Rock, 75-78
[13] Rock, 76
[14] Beeman, Mark et el. “New Approaches to Demystifying insight” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9, 2005; 322-28
[15] Rock, 82-83
[16] Rock, 123
[17] Rock, 122
[18] Rock, 105
[19] Rock, 123
[20] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, (New York, NY: Farrar, Strous, and Giroux, 2013), 105.
[21] Rock, 103
[22] Rock, 108
[23] Rock, 127
[24] Rock, 127
[25] Rock, 158
[26] Rock, 159-60
[27] Rock, 197-99
[28] Rock, 168
[29] Rock, 182
[30] Rock, 236
[31] Rock, 182
[32] Singer, Tania. Caring economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion between Scientists, Economists and the Dalai Lama. New York: Picador 2015
About the Author
Jess Bashioum
One response to “The Astonishing Functions of the Brain.”
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Jess, I appreciate your attention to the immediate and daily regulation of emotion and the long-term adjustments through SCARF. It’s a balanced assessment!
How do you find yourself balancing the depletion of mental resources for the immediate mental tasks with the need for those same resources to reframe the risk/reward of SCARF?