Brains On Purpose™

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
 

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

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

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