{"id":41430,"date":"2025-04-02T18:45:22","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T01:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41430"},"modified":"2025-04-02T18:45:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T01:45:22","slug":"the-astonishing-functions-of-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-astonishing-functions-of-the-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Astonishing Functions of the Brain."},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. David Rock has a refreshing, pragmatic approach in \u201cYour Brain at Work\u201d.\u00a0 He gives tangible tools that can be used to focus better and change the ways we think.\u00a0 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]<\/a>Understanding how the brain physically works helps me to process why I think the way that I do.\u00a0 Conscious mental energy has a high metabolic cost.[2]<\/a> I can understand this from my experiences in exercise instructing.\u00a0 When you finish a strenuous activity, the body is depleted of energy, and it needs to be restored through nutrition. \u00a0This 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]<\/a> 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\u2019s hilarious how switching between the two shows how multi-tasking brings accuracy down.[4]<\/a> Rock writes about this \u201cdual task interference\u201d where you can only do one task well at a time.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Prioritizing Focused and Alert Thinking<\/strong><\/p>\n

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]<\/a> \u00a0Our stage (prefrontal cortex thinking) can only have so many actors (information that has your attention) on it at a time.[7]<\/a> This creates competition in our brain\u2019s circuits to form the best visual awareness.[8]<\/a>Rock recommends simplifying by reducing complex ideas into their core elements and breaking thoughts into smaller chunks to more easily process.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

Saying no to \u00a0external and internal distraction is mentally expensive, especially \u00a0as the Anterior Cingulate Cortex acts as a reflex to anything unusual or unexpected.[10]<\/a>\u00a0 We have the ability to choose if we act on these impulses by inhibiting behaviors or reactions quickly.[11]<\/a> \u00a0Doing this hard work in my brain allows me to get past road blocks to solving problems and into gaining insight.[12]<\/a>\u00a0 This insight creates new pathways to find solutions[13]<\/a>. Beeman\u2019s research found that insight comes to those who are most aware of their own thinking.[14]<\/a>\u00a0 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 \u201cthings change\u201d) and action (harnessing the energy released through the insight), which Rock calls the ARIA model.[15]<\/a><\/p>\n

Emotional Regulation Under Stress<\/strong><\/p>\n

My work environment fosters distraction, stress and uncertainty, which encourages me to apply Rock\u2019s tools to emotionally regulate. Drama is the right word for what happens at the supportive women\u2019s home I work at. \u00a0Many of the women are coming out of homeless and all are coming with trauma. The uncertainty of meeting basic needs causes anxiety.[16]<\/a> The inability to predict what will happen or not having the complete picture feels like a threat to their lives.[17]<\/a>\u00a0 This puts them in an away state to minimize danger and is an intense emotional response.[18]<\/a> Many of these women expect assault or exploitation because that has been their experience on the streets.\u00a0 They experience lack of control and autonomy, feeling powerless to do anything about their situation.[19]<\/a><\/p>\n

The Limbic system is triggered in emotional response, and metabolic resources are reduced for prefrontal cortex thinking.\u00a0 This idea is reminiscent of Kahneman\u2019s System 1 and 2,[20]<\/a> The limbic system is the emotional relationship to thoughts, people and events.[21]<\/a> 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]<\/a> Cognitive reappraisal can be an effective tool to active the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and reduce activity in the Limbic system.[23]<\/a> 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]<\/a> To give the women autonomy where they have the ability to choose is empowering to them.<\/p>\n

SCARF to Change Your Brain<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our brains are social, and safe connections are a primary need.[25]<\/a> 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]<\/a> SCARF is an acronym for 5 social domains which describes our primary social rewards or threats to our brain.[27]<\/a> Status is our place in the social order. Certainty is the ability to predict what will happen. Autonomy is having control or choices. \u00a0Relatedness is our safe connection to people.[28]<\/a> and fairness is acting ethically and appropriately to others.[29]<\/a> The principles in SCARF can be used to change our own brains.\u00a0 The best way to transform our brains long term is quality and quantity of attention paid, or attention density, to deepen new circuits we\u2019ve built.[30]<\/a><\/p>\n

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]<\/a> 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]<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> Rock, David. \u00a0Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long<\/em>\u00a0(New York, NY: Harper Business, 2009), vii. 226<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Rock, 8<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Rock, 9<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Rock, 37<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Rock, 35<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Rock, 13<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Rock, 20-21<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Rock, 23-4<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Rock, 25-6<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Rock, 49-51<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Rock, 55<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Rock, 75-78<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Rock, 76<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Beeman, Mark et el. \u201cNew Approaches to Demystifying insight\u201d Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9, 2005; 322-28<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Rock, 82-83<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Rock, 123<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Rock, 122<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Rock, 105<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Rock, 123<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Daniel Kahneman,\u00a0Thinking, Fast and Slow,<\/em>\u00a0(New York, NY: Farrar, Strous, and Giroux, 2013), 105.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Rock, 103<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> Rock, 108<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Rock, 127<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> Rock, 127<\/p>\n

[25]<\/a> Rock, 158<\/p>\n

[26]<\/a> Rock, 159-60<\/p>\n

[27]<\/a> Rock, 197-99<\/p>\n

[28]<\/a> Rock, 168<\/p>\n

[29]<\/a> Rock, 182<\/p>\n

[30]<\/a> Rock, 236<\/p>\n

[31]<\/a> Rock, 182<\/p>\n

[32]<\/a> Singer, Tania. Caring economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion between Scientists, Economists and the Dalai Lama. New York: Picador 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. David Rock has a refreshing, pragmatic approach in \u201cYour Brain at Work\u201d.\u00a0 He gives tangible tools that can be used to focus better and change the ways we think.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2681,2729,3397],"class_list":["post-41430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-rock","tag-yourbrainatwork","tag-dlgp04","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41431,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41430\/revisions\/41431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}