Brains On Purpose™

NeuroMediators: Understanding the brain is a critical key to resolving conflict (both within a culture and between cultures)

Yesterday I blogged about how very important it is for conflict resolution practitioners to have knowledge about the workings of the brain and the mind. To underscore my point, please listen to this new interview of Doctors Jeffrey Schwartz and Norman Doidge. (Thanks to Australia's ABC National Radio All In the Mind for posting the interview so we may listen; they will post the transcript midweek.)

In the interview you will hear about the brain's plasticity and how understanding its malleability can give you and your clients more options for change. Some points covered:

• You can harness neuroplasticity by paying attention to: 1) how you perceive, 2) how you act, and 3) what you think and imagine.
• When you understand how your brain works, you can use that information to enhance your perspective, broaden your sense of capacity, and, by consistently changing your focus, change your brain.
• Cultural differences are not merely matters of opinion. They are created by brain wiring, an "incredibly important" point, one which needs much more consideration and thought.

Many more topics are discussed. I urge you to listen. You will be reminded of how much of a sculptor of our lives we can be when we master the art of changing our brains. By learning about self-directed neuroplasticity, you are handed the ways and means of neuro-Play-Doh. So what are you going to mold and change? What are you going to help your clients to create?

Let's end this post with Hasbro's tag line for Play-Doh because it is another way of describing self-directed neuroplasticity: "Imagination taking shape!"

Transcript of the interview of Schwartz and Doidge.

Part 2 of "The Power of Plasticity" (interview of Doidge).

Image credit: tabhijit

Upcoming conference on neuroscience and conflict resolution

Jeff and I are happy to be delivering the keynote at this year's conference of the Southern California Mediation Association. The organization has titled the conference

The New Frontier
Science of the Mind: Tools for Negotiators

Some of the seminars, in addition to our presentation, will address brain-related topics:

• Brain Biology of Fair Behavior
• Solution Focused Mediation: Quantum Mechanics and Neuroscience: The Power is in the Focus
• The Neuropsychology of Conflict—How the Brain Works in Mediation

Sounds like a very worthwhile event; the organizers have been very creative and cutting-edge. For a more complete list of the seminars, click on over to idealawg. For all the information about the conference on November 8 and the dinner and program the night before, click for the brochure [pdf]. We hope to meet some of you there. Please let us know if you are attending.

Talk by Dr. Jeff Schwartz in Ireland this week on mind over matter

This blog's Jeffrey Schwartz gave a talk today in Dublin, Ireland; "The Mind and the Brain, Are They Related?" was the title. Excerpt from Irish news article "Mind over matter is not fanciful, says psychiatrist" (IrishTimes.com):

THE FANCIFUL notion of "mind over matter", where the mind can exert influence over the body, is not so fanciful after all. It is possible for the mind to impose lasting physiological changes on the brain to overcome psychiatric problems such as obsessive compulsive disorder.

So argues Prof Jeffrey M Schwartz, one of the world's leading proponents of mind over matter in a psychiatric sense, who was in Dublin yesterday to deliver a lecture at St Patrick's Hospital.
. . .

Prof Schwartz is a research psychiatrist in the school of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has spent years studying conscious awareness and the idea that the actions of the mind can have an effect on the workings of the brain. "I use obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) as a model for the issue of the relationship between the mind and the brain," he said yesterday evening before the lecture.

The brain is the organ that controls our experience of the world via the senses, while the mind is our ability to be self-aware. ...

Click to read the rest of the article.

Some nuggets of self-directed neuroplasticity gold

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

Now online: A new article by Jeff Schwartz and me, plus the newest intallment of my ADR column

The new edition of The Complete Lawyer includes an article by Jeff and me entitled "Exercise Mind Hygiene On A Daily Basis." Excerpt:

Become More Self-Aware In Three Steps

Your reflective mind is your shield against living reactively. It can help you become wiser, healthier and more satisfied—which is worth more than any imaginable income. It is easy to use—but not often simple. Here are three steps that will help you separate yourself from your reactive brain and begin to move into your reflective mind.

The edition is focused on "A Sound Mind in a Sound Body" and has articles for everyone. While you are over there, please take a look at the second installment of my ADR column "The Human Factor." I cowrite it with my terrific ADR sisters Victoria Pynchon, Gini Nelson, and Diane Levin.

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"

Upcoming Colorado event: Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Click to read all about Networking for Skeptics and Procrastinators: Using Your Brain to Create More Business.

Saturday (March 1) PowerPoints

I promised attendees at Saturday's seminar that I would post here the PowerPoints I used in my presentations. And here they are.

Brains on Purpose™: Change Your Mind, Change Your Brain

Note (added June 4, 2009): No longer available.

The Web page is now up for our Smithsonian course

From the Smithsonian Web site . . .

Brains on Purpose: Change Your Mind, Change Your Brain

Sat., March 1, 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.

PROGRAM DETAILS

The science of neuroplasticity demonstrates that our brains are always changing, meaning that we can resculpt our brains in productive ways. This seminar teaches you how to achieve control of your brain so you can meet goals, create life-changing habits, and realize your full potential.

Click to read the rest of the program description and to enroll.

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

Click for instructions on how to listen to the 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.

Conflict: Is it all in your head?

Since neuroscience is one eye through which we look on this blog, and the brain is in the head, I am glad to be reminded of how important the rest of the body is to conflict resolution. The mind and the brain are important but so are the foot and the ankle and the shin . . .

The latest reminder was in an article from The New Mexican: "Mapping the mind." The reporter Jennifer Strand tells us the story behind the soon-to-be-published book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better written by science writers Sandra Blakeslee and her son Matthew Blakeslee, and gives an overview of the book . . .

The book explores the concept of “body maps” in the brain that trace their routes throughout the body and beyond. According to the book, your body is actually mapped onto your brain (homunculus). All these maps together create your sense of your body (body schema) and you create your own map with your attitude toward your body (body image).

“Research now shows that your brain is teeming with body maps — maps of your body’s surface, its musculature, its intentions, its potential for action, even a map that automatically tracks and emulates the actions and intentions of other people around you,” the Blakeslees write. “These body-centered maps are profoundly plastic — capable of significant reorganization in response to damage, experience, or practice.”

Practice. There's self-directed neuroplasticity again. Be sure to take a look at the article then don't miss the exercise near the end of that page.

An excerpt from the book was published in Scientific American in an article entitled  "Where Mind and Body Meet." In the article, the