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So What's Been Engrained into Your Brain? |
In past newsletters I've spent a great deal of time talking about how we learn. It is fascinating to think that we now understand from a neurobiological perspective how learning occurs. Early neurobiologists believed that new neurons were created as we learned new information. But that's not exactly true. We now know that "'the raw material of the brain is the nerve cell, called the neuron. When babies are born, they have almost all of the neurons they will ever have, more than 100 billion of them. Although there is research that indicates some neurons are developed after birth and well into adulthood (in the hippocampus and neo-cortical areas of the brain), the neurons babies have at birth are primarily what they have to work with as they develop into children, adolescents, and adults." (How the Brain Develops by Child Welfare Information Gateway).
Rather then new neurons or new neuronal connections (synapses) the research seems clear that learning occurs by strengthening existing synaptic connections. "Many neuroscientists believe that learning and memory involve changes at neuron-to-neuron synapses. Such changes, called long-term potentiation (LTP) make it easier for connected neurons to communicate with each other, and therefore to form memories." From The Franklin Institute "The Human Brain (www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html). Furthermore learning and emotion are inseparable. What we learn is affected by our emotions at the time of the learning experience. High levels of stress tend to diminish our ability to learn in a typical sense, while a state of "Relaxed Alertness" a term coined by Renate Nummela Caine and Geoffrey Caine and referenced in their book 12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles in Action is the optimal learning state. I quote, "People in a state of relaxed alertness experience low threat and high challenge". How about that as a plug for training games.
But what of PTSD, Posttraumatic stress disorder. We might not be able to learn how to solve an algebraic equation while the house is on fire, but are we still not learning? In animal research as well as human studies, the amygdala has been shown to be strongly involved in the formation of emotional memories, especially fear-related memories. We are talking about a learning experience surrounded in trauma. The amygdala of our brain, a part of the brain's limbic system, is of course associated with learning, memory and emotion. Read a wonderful story by Priscilla Vail MAT on "How Emotional Issues Change as Kids Grow" located at www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/2372.
Do you remember where you were on 9/11/2001, or when President Kennedy was shot? (Please forgive me if you were not born before November 22, 1963). In the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Boston College psychologist, Elizabeth Kensinger presents research which "shows that whether an event is pleasurable or aversive seems to be a critical determinant of the accuracy with which the event is remembered, with negative events being remembered in greater detail than positive ones. For example, after seeing a man on a street holding a gun, people remember the gun vividly, but they forget the details of the street. The more activity in the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala, two emotion-processing regions of the brain, the more likely an individual is to remember details intrinsically linked to the emotional aspect of the event, such as the exact appearance of the gun." (Association for Psychological Science, 2007, August 28). (We Remember Bad Times Better Than Good. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September). This makes sense, because we understand we need to give our attention to something in order to learn. Fearful situations naturally rivet our attention. We are literally learning to survive. Imagine how strong such a neural network of synapses can be.
This begs the question, "So what's been engrained in your brain?" And let's not limit our experiential learning, and the strength of our synaptic connections to states of optimal learning (relaxed alertness) and "run for the hills" trauma. Remember our brains are constantly evolving. Plasticity is the idea that your brain changes with each and every new experience. In addition our perception of each and every new experience is affected by what we've experienced or learned in the past. Often you'll hear people talk about "TAPES" that play over and over again in their brain when confronted with a particular situation. For example, do you know someone who can't seem to find a positive in any given situation; the glass is always half empty for these folks. I would imagine that you do. Well what do you suppose happens to their synaptic connections as they reaffirm the negative each and every day of their lives? I know a woman who whenever asked "how are you doing today" she religiously responds "Same shit, different day". Her outlook on life has become a knee jerk reaction, and it is always highly negative. My assumption is that we literally strengthen such negative messages in our brain. Are there messages that you've engrained into your brain?
Hats off to Norman Vincent Peale for his Power of Positive Thinking, and to those who encourage repeating positive affirmations daily. I believe such efforts help us to improve our daily outlook on life. As mentioned above, science is now telling us that learning is all about strengthening synapses in our brain. So it makes perfect sense that we can train ourselves to a more positive perspective.
I'd like to take this idea one step further however. I believe that many of the negative messages we repeat to ourselves are never acted upon (but simply relearned). Someone may say something that angers us or makes us feel bad and we just let it ruminate. We might even lose sleep endlessly thinking about it, which only serves to strengthen the thought process. I'd like to suggest that next time you interrupt this negative learning process. Think about what was said or done to make you feel angry, sad, uncomfortable or whatever. Now instead of allowing time to heal all wounds, make a plan to positively address it! A simple plan that involves taking a proactive step to address the negative feeling in your life. For example, your sister calls to chat, but the conversation always seem to get around to how wonderful her kids are, and how lack luster your kids seem to be. It makes you feel angry, but in order to keep peace in the family you always let it go. But do you let it go? Not at all, it bothers you, so you think about it for hours after the call. In effect you're simply relearning and strengthening the entire negative experience. Why would your want to strengthen such an uncomfortable thought process? I want to suggest you develop a plan to address these negative messages, and then act on the plan. In our example it might be as simple as next time telling your sister some of the things about your children that you are most proud of. In this way you'll become practiced at addressing and extinguishing such negative thoughts and feelings and actually be replacing these negative learnings with positive outcomes. |
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