Brains On Purpose™

Some nuggets of self-directed neuroplasticity gold

Click to get some tips on changing your brain—on purpose!

Dan Rather reports on neuroplasticity

You may watch online a Dan Rather report on how our brains change throughout life. This 52 minutes on neuroplasticity includes segments on memory, meditation, stroke, and brain fitness.

Hat tip to Dr. Ginger Campbell. Click for her overview of this "Mind Science" program on neuroplasticity.

Good mind hygiene—thought management—is the pathway to conflict resolution

In her blog Lab Notes, Newsweek's Sharon Begley posted a story about the Dalai Lama observing brain surgery.

Afterwards, he chatted with the surgeon, telling him how his scientist friends had patiently explained to him that all of our thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams and other mental activities are the products of electrical and chemical activity in the brain. But he had always wondered something, the Dalai Lama told the surgeon. If electricity and chemistry can produce thoughts and all the rest, can thoughts act back on the physical stuff of the brain to change its chemical, electrical and other physical properties?

The surgeon said no.

The brain produces and shapes mental activity, the brain surgeon said; mental activity does not alter the brain.

This incident took place about a decade ago. We now know that "mental activity" can shape and change the brain. In her post The Lotus and the Synapse, Begley gives examples of research showing that both thinking and meditation can mold your brain. Jeff's research with self-directed neuroplasticity (and here) has also shown that your thoughts change your brain.

You definitely have control over the neuron paths you create inside your skull. What brain pathways have you been forging? Have you created paths that are bearish, bitchy, surly, sullen, frenzied, fierce, arbitrary, absolutist, wimpy, weak,  stolid, stoic, considerate, compassionate? (You get the idea.) The thoughts you entertain, allow, and author are those that design your brain.

Each minute, the thoughts to which you are giving attention are sculpting your brain. Your mind hygiene, your thought management, shapes not only your brain but your life. And your conflict! The conflict between people practicing good brain hygiene will be very different from between people who have poor mind hygiene.

The life of a person with poor mind hygiene usually, well, stinks. And they often have lots of conflict that is messy. Think neuro-Pigpen.

What are your clients thinking? How good is their mind hygiene? And how about you? Aside from being a good model and attending to your place in the conflict's emotional contagion, what is your role in the mind hygiene of your clients? Let me know what you think, please.

Image credits:
jetolla at morgueFile
ammcf at photobucket

Note (added April 20, 2008, 9:17 AM Mountain): A blog post at Creating Passionate Users that includes information about emotional contagion. Scroll down to the section entitled "Emotional Contagion"

A key to cross-cultural conflict resolution: Around the world in almost 80 (0,000,000) brains

Brains vary from culture to culture—a lot!

Vickie Pynchon at her Settle It Now Blog is posting about the event she is attending: Mediators Beyond Borders Founding Congress. Yesterday in How to Make Your Opponent Do What You Want Him to Do: Part I she posted a list created by Ken Cloke of 12 Ways Systems Resist Change. In reading it, I was reminded of how much cultures vary. This list would apply in some cultures; in many other cultures it would be a mismatch.

Neurocience research is showing us that the brains of people in different cultures are not the same. Because brains differ from culture to culture, so will resistance to change. Also varying will be how conflict is viewed—and resolved. Here are just a couple of examples of the research on brains and culture.

Recently scientists in Singapore and Illinois compared how the brains of East Asians and of Westerners reacted to visual stimuli. They found that the older East Asian's brains responded differently from the brains of the older Westerners. In an article "Culture sculpts neural response to visual stimuli, new research indicates" principal investigator Dr. Denise Park is quoted as saying:

These are the first studies to show that culture is sculpting the brain.

In another study, researchers looked at how native English speakers and native Chinese speakers did arithmetic. From an Associated Press article about the research:

Simple arithmetic was easily done by both groups, but they used different parts of the brain . . .  .

[Both brain/culture studies are linked to at the end of this post.]

Recognizing the advantages of different ways of seeing the world

For global understanding, one of the many exciting results of this kind of research is described later in the AP article:

Interview of Sandra Blakeslee: Revisiting "Conflict: Is it all in your head?"

In the post Conflict: Is it all in your head?, I talked about the book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better. You may listen to an interview of the book's coauthor Sandra Blakeslee at The Brain Science Podcast.

Also at that site is an interview of Sharon Begley, author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves and coauthor with Jeff of The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force

While you are there, you may want to listen to an interview of Dr. Norman Doidge in which he discusses neuroplasticity. Doidge is the author of The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. The interviewer Dr. Ginger Campbell says,

Dr. Doidge and I agree that neuroplasticity is the most important discovery about the brain that has been made in several hundred years. In his interview Dr. Doidge talks about some of the obstacles that delayed this discovery including what he calls the “plastic paradox,” which is the fact that plasticity itself can contribute to the development of rigid behaviors, including addictions and bad habits.

And I will add that neuroplasticity can result in the development of rigid conflict styles. Neuroplasticity is a double-edged sword. It can give you great power to change—and it can carve deep ruts of habitual behavior.

Note (added January 11, 2008, 12:50 PM Mountain): Brain Science Podcast now includes an interview with  Dr. Edward Taub.

PBS program on the brain, its fitness, and neuroplasticity

Click for the post at idealawg about the brain program on PBS, including links to a three-minute preview. Show times are in December; the program has already aired in some locations. Don't miss it.

Three memorable stories to enlighten you about your brain

May I suggest a great way to get an overview of the workings of the brain? Click on the links below to see three incredible, impressive, and marvelous stories.

National Geographic channel will be presenting a series beginning November 16, titled My Brilliant Brain which will profile people with extraordinary talent. (The links below will take you to the series today.) From the National Geographic Web site:

My Brilliant Brain uses a mix of fascinating experiments, special effects photography and state-of-the-art computer animation to travel into the inner recesses of the mind. Featuring extraordinary people with amazing abilities, this new series takes viewers on an unforgettable journey into the brain.

And from the National Geographic Channel Web site [at which you now may view program clips and photos]:

This riveting, new three-part series examines three groups of geniuses to answer questions about human intelligence. Do differences in gender, brain size and brain hemisphere dominance enable these remarkable individuals to excel so far beyond their peers? Or, can education and environment help fuel intelligence and enable anyone to become a prodigy, if given the opportunity?

Using computer generated images, brain scans and expert testimony, we unlock some of the brain’s biggest mysteries Make Me a Genius profiles Susan Polger, whose unique education early in childhood shapes a supreme ability to play chess, making her the world’s first female chess grand master. Delving deep into the minds of savants, Accidental Genius shares the story of

Listen to Jeffrey Schwartz and me on Tuesday evening: "Leading Your Brain Instead of It Leading You"

From the Brain-Based Coaching Web site . . .

Don't miss the Brain Based Coaching Special Interest Group call Tuesday, 9/18/07 at 7:00 EDT.

We will have the opportunity to hear from and talk with two very important people in the world of emerging neuroscience.

Bridge no: 1-212-457-9879 PIN 700827#

The talk will be: "Leading Your Brain Instead of It Leading You."by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD and Stephanie West Allen, JD.

This is going to be so good you'll want to invite everyone you know!

Dr. Schwartz is author of the seminal books on neuroplasticity: "The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity" and "the Power of Mental Force"co-authored with Sharon Begley, and the bestseller "Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder".

He is a psychiatrist and research professor at UCLA.

Stephanie West Allen is a lawyer, speaker, trainer, author and personal strategist. She writes what has been called the most comprehensive blog on understandable neuroscience, www.brainsonpurpose.com.

One of her specialties is neuroscience and conflict resolution. Together Jeff and Stephanie have authored several widely-quoted articles which make neuroscience accessible to the layperson (find links on the www.brainsonpurpose.com blog site.

Make sure you are there for this incredible call

Notes from the "fascinating" talk Jeffrey Schwartz gave today at the IdeaFestival

( Photo credit: Geoff Oliver Bugbee—click photo for larger image)

As I announced a while back, Jeff Schwartz spoke this morning at the 2007 IdeaFestival™ in Louisville, Kentucky; his talk was called The Mind and the Brain (just as is one of his books). Wayne Hall blogged about Jeff's presentation and concluded the post with: "This has been a fascinating talk that I'm certain my notes don't capture adequately."

You may read the Hall notes on the Schwartz talk here. Some of the highlights (the quotation marks indicate a direct quote of Jeff from the talk) . . .

Cognitive reframing has a big effect on the brain by lowering negative emotion. One can quite easily train people to reframe . . .  .
. . .

Reframing "markedly, radically" changes how the brain responds . . . , and, in fact, college kids can do this after only couple days of training. What happens is that the frontal cortex area is activated and a marked decrease in fear in the brain is observed.
. . .

"The brain puts out the call, the mind decides whether to listen." The brain will respond in an animal-like way, but the human mind has the capacity to focus a very special kind of attention, one that can change or damp down damaging or fearful responses.
. . .

"The brain doesn't create consciousness, but perhaps modulates the consciousness that it receives."

Read the rest of the notes about Jeff's talk here. Thanks to quick-blogger Hall, you also can read notes on the talks of other fine thinkers at the this year's IdeaFestival™. They include . . .

• Michio Kaku: Parallel Worlds
• James McLurkin: Dances with Robots
• Karen Walker's fashion rules
• Tiffany Shlain: A Declaration of Interdependence

For more of the blog posts on the IdeaFestival presentations, go here and read the posts beginning on September 13. All the speakers at 2007 IdeaFestival™.

Note (added September 28, 2007, 10:20 AM Mountain): More about Jeff' Schwartz's talk at the Idea Festival.

Jeffrey Schwartz to speak on the mind and brain at 2007 Idea Festival™

This year's IdeaFestival™ speakers include physicist Dirk Brockmann, lawyer Shirin Ebadi, author Ray Bradbury, Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain, Apple founder Steve Wozniak, and many more in this unique and stellar lineup. Jeff's presentation The Mind and Brain is described . . .

Recent advances involving our understanding of the brain particularly as it relates to its “plasticity” are having a profound affect on how we think about everything from brain injuries and disease to human creativity and education. Leading neuroscientist and author Jeffery Schwartz will discuss his work and ideas surrounding the mind (which he argues is not an illusion) and the brain and how “…the human mind is an independent entity that can shape and control the functioning of the physical brain…not just in childhood but throughout life”.

2007 IdeaFestival™ (IF) is being held September 13 - 15, in Louisville, Kentucky.

Other IF links:

• IdeaFestival™ Blog (latest post Wired tests crowd journalism joins some other interesting IF Blog posts)
• IdeaFestival™ Podcast featuring speakers from 2006 IdeaFestival™
• History and purpose of IdeaFestival™

"There's a great future in [neuroplasticity]. Think about it. Will you think about it?"*

"We commonly live with a self reduced to its bare minimum; most of our faculties lie dormant, relying on habit; and habit knows how to manage without them."
-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

In this short sentence, Proust has described one of the most important differences between accidental brains and brains on purpose. When we are only relying on habit, we are reduced to our "bare minimum" — and we are not in charge of our own brain.

As we will often mention here, our brains are constantly changing, rewiring, making new connections between synapses. These changes are a result of the brain's neuroplasticity, its impressive ability to reorganize.

As these brain remodels take place, we have two choices. We can let them happen with our "self reduced to its bare minimum." Or we can awaken "our faculties," direct the changes, and turn neuroplasticity into self-directed neuroplasticity (a phrase coined by Jeff). When our brains are engaging in neuroplasticity without our knowledge, direction, or awareness, our brains are changing accidentally. When we are employing self-directed neuroplasticity, we are changing our brains on purpose. Accidental and on purpose are two very different ways of being in the world, and only one allows for autonomy and  maximum performance.

The people adept at sculpting and rewiring their brains on purpose are better at facilitating dispute resolution. They may have greater levels of resilience, spontaneity, creativity, concentration, observation, and other traits and skills instrumental in moving towards agreement. They can use their higher faculties and are not a slave to habit. They are on purpose.

In future posts we will be discussing

• methods for employing and increasing self-directed neuroplasticity (you can read about some methods in advance in our three articles linked to at Stephanie's page or Jeff's page)
• ways to increase the chances that your clients will use self-directed neuroplasticity and why you would want to
• another meaning of Brains on Purpose™ in addition to the one described above.

*Said by Walter Brooke in The Graduate (slightly modified) - watch the scene from The Graduate

Note (added 10:30 PM Mountain): Two books on neuroplasticity.

Scene from The Graduate