How your Brain supports your Health and How You Can Support Your Brain
I’ve been reading the book Lost Connections with the current Camp Aftermath group.
In this book, Johann Hari explores reasons for “depression” apart from the current medical model of a dysfunctional brain. Chapter 2 talks about “grief” as originally being an exception to the diagnosis of depression in the early versions of the DSM. And that got my brain going…
It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything, I decided I needed a new strategy. What tends to block my publishing more frequently is feeling I need to create a longer post that “educates” all by itself. I start posts, but then get pulled away and tend not to finish them.
So I’m trying something new here. I’m going to just post resources as I come across them along with a few words about why I think they’re worthwhile. Hopefully, this will not only give you access to a curated selection of other thinkers and researchers about the brain, but an insight into how I think about the brain — by highlighting what I want you to learn and how I’d like to see you thinking about the brain too.
Now, back to our newly scheduled programming 😉…
These links are to 60-minute podcasts by the CBC Ideas program. Together, they offer a different perspective on "normal" brains vs the value of neurodiversity.
What I would love for you to gain from these talks is an increasing awareness that — apart from physical injury (including nutritional gaps, sleep impairments, or other indirect ways of creating brain dysfunctions) — brains aren’t broken.
There are a variety of brains because there are a variety of people. Some of these differences are the result of natural diversity. Some are the result of learning history. We all grow up with different experiences, have learned different skills, have different talents and practice different things.
None of this means a brain is broken because it’s not “average”. (Just like no family is “broken” because it doesn’t have the average number of children — which in Ontario is 2.9. Who wants 0.9 of a child??)
We just all need to discover our gifts and our work-arounds.
Please feel free to comment on the Ideas episodes, the diversity of brains, and/or my trial of an abbreviated post technique.
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico discovered that people who bounce back well from stress tend to have a thick (take a deep breath!…) ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), an area of the frontal lobes (that would be near the front and bottom of your brain, behind your forehead). So what…?
I’m feeling like I want to start a new series about how to treat every brain with respect.
What does that mean?
Well, one of the core principles of the way I think about brains is that every brain is doing its best for its person. A brain isn’t “broken” because it’s not doing what we (or others) want it to do in the way we (or others) think it should be done.
Brains have lots of features (built-in options for flexible functioning) that we sometimes complain about as bugs (“it’s not working”). Instead of complaining about bugs, we just need to learn how to use the features.
I responded recently to someone in one of my Facebook groups who was asking about how to develop personal discipline to Get. Things. Done.
Of course, I couldn't resist applying how I think about the brain to that question.
I thought I would just share the question and my thoughts with you, in case you're searching for some discipline in this period of New Beginnings. :-)
Q: In a podcast a while back, Charlie Gilkey mentioned that he found people who had experience in cultures that required discipline (i.e. those in the military, or athletes) were often better at developing discipline in other areas of their life.
My question: What suggestions do you have for those like me who do not have that in their background and who struggle with discipline? How does a complete newbie to discipline, develop it?
Here's an important question from someone who visited my website...
While I have no issue with your assertion that brain is not a machine, I was wondering: are there folks who still think that way?
A whole western culture!
A "reductionist" approach of reducing the brain to its "bits", exploring those bits, and thinking that will tell us how the Whole works is machine-thinking.
Looking at sexy fMRIs and deciding...
If you ever wonder about the truthfulness (or not) of some of what you've been taught about the brain (left vs right-brained?, bigger is better? ....), this is the video to check out for some quick answers (3 min). Of course, it's not the whole story every time, but what do you want for 3 minutes?! :)
Blow your mind with these brain myths! Check out GE Reports: http://invent.ge/1r0kSnG SUBSCRIBE! It's Free: http://bit.ly/10kWnZ7 ---Links to follow us below --- Instagram and Twitter: @whalewatchmeplz and @mitchellmoffit Clickable: http://bit.ly/16F1jeC and http://bit.ly/15J7ube Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1fjWszw Twitter: http://bit.ly/1d84R71 Tumblr: http://bit.ly/1amIPjF Vine: Search "AsapSCIENCE" on vine! Written and created by Mitchell Moffit (twitter @mitchellmoffit) and Gregory Brown (twitter @whalewatchmeplz).
I came across this article the other day:
It discusses evidence as to whether the brains of men and women are different, based on different types of brain scanning.
For today, I don't want to get into a deep discussion of whether there are differences or not.
I do want to point out that trying to find differences by pointing to brain anatomical differences:
(1) isn't at all clear, as you'll see in the article where they go back and forth with every paragraph. There is evidence any which way you want to read it, and
(2) so what? Anatomical differences don't show us very well how those differences translate into the way men and women relate to each other, whiat any particular individual can or can't do well, or much of anything else important to Real Life.
If there are meaningful differences (and that's another discussion), they will be found in how the brain networks of individuals are connected together and whether those kinds of networks are shared between groups of men and groups of women rather than groups of other kinds (nationality, language, profession, etc. etc.).
Take-home message: Beware the research based on anatomical brain scans. Especially if what you want to know is how people actually function. Thinking that we can understand how people (and their brains) think and feel and act based on pictures of their structures is what I would consider the Brain Image Myth.
What do you think? Make sense?
One of the things I sometimes hear people talk about is the idea that brain can only manage 7+2 information bits at a time. On some occasions, people are referring to our memory capacity (we can only remember 7 + 2 bits); on others, people have stretched this to mean our brains can handle only 7 + 2 bits of information at any one time.
I need to challenge this as a brain myth worth losing.
I want you to think about the brain instead as an amazing system of billions of possible connections all networked together and all doing what they do in unbelievably short time periods.
Here are some "bits" of information I'd like you to consider:
Alisa Miller alerted me to her fun list of 100 Fascinating Facts about the Brain -- what a great collection of all sorts of tidbits about the brain!
Once I saw it, I wanted to share it with all of you --
Feel free to share -- what's your favorite factoid? The most surprising? The hardest to believe?
The one that caught my attention today was:
#47: Decision-making. Women tend to take longer to make a decision,but are more likely to stick with the decision, compared to men, who are more likely to change their mind after making a decision.
This makes total sense to me after a holiday period of trying to decide on a new dishwasher - I'm the researcher, my husband is the "let's just get one!" half of the team.
Looking forward to hearing what catches your attention in this fabulous list!
This is a "reprint" of an entertaining and educational article from Dr. Jeff Carmen, who created the pirHEG system I write about on my website and in other blog posts. With his permission I'm re-posting it here for those of you interested in:- HEG - the frontal lobes - learning to put the brakes on yourself ;-) He talks primarily about the prefrontal cortex -- for those of you who read my blog (and thanks for that! ), that will be roughly what I talk about more loosely as the "frontal lobes" or the "executive system" -- that area of the brain sitting behind your forehead. He also refers to the frontal lobes/prefrontal cortex as being primarily "inhibitory", meaning that instead of the activity of the executive system being dedicated to Getting Stuff Done (e.g., movements, sensory activity) it tends to be more actively Stopping Unnecessary Stuff (e.g., distractions, impulsive actions, attention-wandering, anger outbursts, emotional extremes...). So I'm hoping you can see how important it is to have those frontal lobes in gear to get you where you need to be! Anyway, enough from me. Here he is....
Is the internet your brain's friend?I was asked a question by someone who was in a discussion about the internet and its influence on our brains. Specifically, they were talking about whether there is any truth to some recent work showing that the internet, and how we (you, your children) are using it, is making us dumber. So the question posed to me was.... Wondering if you have any thoughts/insights on the changing nature of the brain, with increased internet commnunications, and the prevalence of tools like Google to locate information? My answer was:
I joined a conversation over at the Shift in Action website which was hosted by a member named Rod Sherwin. He posed a question about how we can know when shifts in consciousness -- personal or societal -- are happening. How can we know when we experience not just big dramatic shifts in our ways of being, but even the little movements that might take us from 3 out of 10 on some scale of change to 3.5 out of 10?In working with people's brains using nonlinear methods of feedback, it is very common indeed that people experience changes - shifts in their ways of being, thinking, feeling, and/or acting - that they are just not aware of at the time of the shift. Every neurofeedback practitioner I speak to has stories of people changing in all sorts of both subtle and dramatic ways, but not seeing the change themselves or not realizing how big or important a shift it is. I think this is partly...
This is a video from TED.com that I think you will find moving and inspirational --- one, because I did and two, because a number of my clients and readers have already shared the link with me, being sure I would want to see it. It's almost 20 minutes, but I think you'll find it gives you food for thought that's worth every minute.Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who realized one morning that she was experiencing a massive stroke.
