Expectations for the Brain

This week, I enjoyed discovering and re-discovering reading regarding the brain and how it works, how we can change its workings, memory, and meditation’s effects on the brain. This all seems to be about practice, expectation, and changing expectations.

DelanceyPlace.com is a website that publishes excerpts from fascinating non-fiction. Back in 2015, they published an excerpt from a 2014 book. By Matthieu Ricard, Antoine Lutz and Richard J. Davidson, the book, Mind of the Meditator, is about how mastering a task transforms the brain’s pathways.

“The discovery of meditation‘s benefits coincides with recent neuroscientific findings showing that the adult brain can still be deeply transformed through experience. These studies show that when we learn how to juggle or play a musical instrument, the brain undergoes changes through a process called neuroplasticity. A brain region that controls the movement of a violinist’s fingers becomes progressively larger with mastery of the instrument. A similar process appears to happen when we meditate. Nothing changes in the surrounding environment, but the meditator regulates mental states to achieve a form of inner enrichment, an experience that affects brain functioning and its physical structure. The evidence amassed from this research has begun to show that meditation can rewire brain circuits to produce salutary effects not just on the mind and the brain but on the entire body. …”

Addressing how ‘the adult brain be still be be transformed through experience’, HuffPost had a related story this week, To Increase Your Well-being, Train Your Brain. Mimi O’Connor wrote, “Dr. Richard Davidson, neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that practice is the key element in changing our brains for the better. He is well known for his pioneering study with Buddhist monks. In that study he hooked the monks up to fMRI machines and observed their brains as they meditated. The monks produced gamma waves, indicating intensely focused thought, which were 30 times as strong as the control groups.’ Additionally, large areas of the meditator’s brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions. This study showed that conscious effort can change the neural structure, activity and function of the brain.” Dr. Richard Davidson was one of the other book’s authors, of course.

“Similar to the inspiring theme of the film Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come,” Davidson’s motto seems to be, “Exercise them (neural pathways) and they will strengthen.”

Offering another point of view that affirms the same was Sophie McBain in Head in the Cloud. Her article addressed human memory and studies regarding the impact of computers and digital systems on our ability to remember. What becomes clear from her intriguing article is that, part of what affects our ability to remember, is our expectation of a need to remember. Here, in essence, we’re seeing the opposite impact of the other articles, where people who have computers to help them remember, don’t practice remembering, thereby weakening their ability to remember.

They’re all ripple effects, aren’t they, a sort of Doom Loop on the one hand, of expecting less and trying less, and so spiraling into achieving less, or conversely, a Halo Loop, of expecting more and trying harder.

Of course, I need to tie this back to writing. Practice writing, pursue it, try to master it, and the pathways and areas of the brain used for writing can be strengthened and transformed. Instead of believing you can’t, believe you can, and try. Being human, it’s rarely that simple, and people like Judith Sherven, PhD, can inject insights and ideas for re-working the subconscious programming behind the Doom Loop.

I’d also like to tie all of this back to time, reality and the nature of existence, but that’s for another post. Instead, I need to go off and write like crazy, at least one more time.