The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live—and How You Can Change Them 🔍
Richard J. Davidson, Sharon Begley 🔍
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This reduced my pre-processing to a few minutes, vs an hour or more of manual chunking.. but the quality of chunk has suffered.
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Emotional Life of Your Brain: Introduction
Background
- Personal journey to understand emotions and enhance well-being
- Development of affective neuroscience as a hybrid discipline
Aims
- Show emotions are central to brain functions and life of the mind
- Contribute to understanding what it means to be human
- Apply research findings in real world contexts
Personal Thread
- Conviction that mainstream psychology and neuroscience have limited perspective
- Thirty years of research in affective neuroscience
- Discoveries on brain mechanisms, empathy, autistic brain, depression, etc.
Professional Thread
- Research at University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Director of Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (since 2010)
- Basic science and real-world application focus
- Projects include preschool curriculum, meditation training for veterans, etc.
Emotional Style
- Concept revealed by decades of research in affective neuroscience
- Smaller emotional unit: emotional state
Classification Systems
- Emotional states: smallest, most fleeting unit of emotion
- Emotional traits: relatively stable tendencies to feel and express emotions
- Personality: broader construct that includes dispositions, interests, values, etc.
- Temperament: inherited, innate predispositions to react to stimuli (calm, irritable, etc.)
Emotional Styles:
- Consistent way of responding to experiences
- Governed by specific brain circuits
- Can be measured objectively
- Influences emotional states, traits, and moods
Components of Emotional Style:
Resilience:
- Recovery from adversity
- Slow or quick recovery
- Not immediately apparent, experienced through consequences
Outlook:
- Sustainability of positive emotion
Social Intuition:
- Adeptness at picking up social signals
Self-Awareness:
- Perception of bodily feelings reflecting emotions
Sensitivity to Context:
- Regulation of emotional responses based on context
Attention:
- Sharpness and clarity of focus
Discoveries from Modern Neuroscientific Research
Importance of Scientific Method:
- Rigorous experiments necessary for understanding human behavior and emotion
- Discoveries complemented by research of colleagues around the world
Six Dimensions of Emotional Style:
- Reflect properties and patterns in the brain (sine qua non)
- Not intuitive or immediately apparent to conscious awareness
Old Theory vs. New Theory:
- New theory must explain same phenomena as old theory, as well as new ones.
Einstein's General Theory of Relativity: Explained established gravitational phenomena and introduced new ones to surpass Newton's theory.
Emotional Style vs. Big Five Personality Traits
- Openness to new experience: Strong Social Intuition, Self-aware, Focused Attention
- Conscientiousness: Well-developed Social Intuition, Focused Attention, Acute Sensitivity to Context
- Extraversion: Fast to Recover, Positive Outlook
- Agreeableness: Highly attuned Sensitivity to Context, Strong Resilience, Positive Outlook
- Neuroticism: Slow to recover, Negative Outlook, Relatively insensitive to context, Unfocused Attention
Common Trait Descriptors as Emotional Styles
- Impulsive: Unfocused Attention, Low Self-Awareness
- Patient: High Self-Awareness, High Sensitivity to Context
- Shy: Slow to Recover, Low Sensitivity to Context
- Anxious: Slow to recover, Negative Outlook, High levels of Self-awareness, Unfocused Attention
- Optimistic: Fast to recover, Positive Outlook
- Chronically unhappy: Slow to recover, Negative Outlook, cannot sustain positive emotions
Early Research on Emotion and the Brain:
- Academic psychology relegated emotion study mostly to social and personality psychology
- Few researchers interested in brain basis of emotion
- Most interest focused on so-called emotion centers in limbic system
- I believed higher cortical functions, particularly prefrontal cortex, play a role in emotion
Challenging the Prevailing Paradigm:
- Prevailing winds opposed study of emotions in brain's seat of reason
- Viewed as quixotic, neuroscientific equivalent of hunting elephants in Alaska
- Personal interests also considered controversial: practicing meditation for scientific research.
Background
- Belief in separate brain regions for reason and emotions
- Dismissive attitude towards meditation in academic community
- Author's personal interest in meditation faced resistance
- Transformative meeting with the Dalai Lama in 1992
Change in Attitude Towards Meditation
- Increased receptiveness to research on mental training in scientific and medical communities
- Publication of research on meditation in top scientific journals
- National Institutes of Health funding for meditation research
Promises to the Dalai Lama
- Personal study of meditation
- Making research on positive emotions a central focus of psychology
Results of Research
- Altering patterns of brain activity in meditators
- Strengthening empathy, compassion, optimism, and sense of well-being
- Higher-order reasoning sites hold key to altering brain activity
Personal Transformation and Guidance for Readers
- Increasing awareness of Emotional Style
- Offering a guide for personal transformation
"Meditation" in Sanskrit means "familiarization."
Action Items
- Study the author's personal and scientific transformation
- Learn about the role of higher-order reasoning sites in emotions
- Increase awareness of your Emotional Style and that of others.
- Self-help books and pop psychology assume predictable responses to significant life events
- Experts propose standard reactions to various experiences (grieving, falling in love, etc.)
- Recommend universal steps for emotional recovery and personal growth
- Research from neuroscience challenges these assumptions
- People's DNA shapes how they respond to prescription drugs
- The same is true for emotions and brain activity
- Thousands of people with similar backgrounds react differently to the same life events.
Emotional Styles: Understanding Individual Differences in Emotional Reactions
- Difference in emotional reactions to life's ups and downs
- Research focused on identifying emotional styles (ES)
Concept of ES:
- Constellations of emotional reactions and coping responses
- Unique to each individual, influences how people respond to challenges
- Six dimensions: Resilience, Outlook, Social Intuition, Self-Awareness, Sensitivity to Context, Attention
Research Findings:
- ES has a neural basis and is not merely a theoretical construct
- Each dimension describes a continuum (Fast/Slow Recovery, Positive/Negative, etc.)
- Combinations of dimensions create unique emotional profiles
Six Dimensions of Emotional Style:
- Resilience style: Ability to recover from adversity (Fast or Slow)
- Outlook style: Maintaining a positive perspective on life (Positive or Negative)
- Social Intuition style: Ability to read nonverbal cues and infer emotional states (Socially Intuitive or Puzzled)
- Self-Awareness style: Awareness of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations (Self-Aware or Self-Opaque)
- Sensitivity to Context style: Ability to follow social rules and adjust behavior accordingly (Tuned In or Tuned Out)
- Attention style: Ability to focus on tasks and screen out distractions (Focused or Unfocused)
Implications of Emotional Style Research:
- Understanding the neural basis of emotions
- Potential impact on physical health
- Possibility of changing emotional styles for better emotional response and coping strategies.
- Drawn to individual differences in human behavior
- Epiphany: humans differ in prefrontal cortex activity levels
- Focused on Emotional Style and its dimensions
- Variation in emotional response essential for self-understanding
- Real-world consequences: predict vulnerability/resilience to mental health issues
Neuroplasticity
- Brain has ability to change structure and function
- Change can come from external experiences and internal thoughts
- Examples: virtuoso violinists, London taxicab drivers
Virtual Piano Study
- Scientists found motor cortex expanded after actual piano practice
- Expansion also occurred in those who only imagined playing piano
- Thinking alone increased amount of space devoted to specific function.
Emotional Style Dimensions
- Six dimensions: Social Intuition, Reasoning, Emotional Repertoire, Self-Control, Perspective Taking, and Response Bodily
- Each dimension grounded in particular brain activity patterns
- Brain imaging shows measurable cortex and limbic system activity.
Brain Structures
- Fusiform gyrus: specialized for identifying individuals or group experts
- Low activity in fusiform gyrus linked to emotional blindness in some individuals.
Neuroplasticity Impact on Emotional Style
- Brain can change through experiences and thoughts
- Potential for altering function, neural territory, connections, activity levels, and neurochemical messenger service
- Could impact Emotional Style by changing brain patterns.
- Emotional Style is a product of brain functions including connections, circuits, structure/function relationships, and neurochemistry
- Brain can change, leading to potential alteration in Emotional Style
- Stable over time but can be altered through conscious effort
Emotical Style: Not Ideal or Optimal
- No single ideal Emotional Style
- Variety of emotional types necessary for civilization
- Some extremes may be dysfunctional, impact productivity and relationships
- Only consider changing Emotional Style if it interferes with daily life or causes distress
Personal Growth: Changing Emotional Style
- Through mental training (meditation, cognitive-behavior therapy)
- Alters brain function and structure
- Improves resilience, social intuition, self-awareness, coping mechanisms, attention, and sense of well-being.
The Discovery of Emotional Style
- In the 1970s, studying emotions was not popular in psychology
- Known as a "dry" subject; few scientists were interested
- Cognitive psychology was on the rise
- Computer metaphor for human mind
- Emotions viewed as disruptions or interruptions to cognitive processes
- Some researchers claimed emotion disrupts cognitive function entirely
- Most charitable view: emotions are "interrupts" that cause attention to key information
Emotion and Cognitive Psychology
- Focus on perception, memory, problem-solving, speech
- Viewed emotions as distractions or static
- Cognitive psychologists studied mental processes unaffected by emotions
- Belief that emotion causes disruptions or interruptions in behavior
Examples of Emotions as Interrupts
- Fear: focusing on threat, getting away from danger
- Sadness: attending to someone's needs when hurt
- Anger: defending oneself against an insult.
Background:
- Emotions seen as disruptive forces, not given much importance in cognitive psychology
- Haughty disdain towards emotions due to their association with the limbic region and brain stem
- Research focused on lab rats and their hypothalamus, considered the font of motivation and emotion
- Cortical snobism: functions arising from regions other than cortex deemed primitive
- Debate reached its apex in the 1980s with cognition vs. emotion as separate systems
Obstacles to Studying Emotions:
- Lack of recognition for emotions' role: emotions considered mental distractions and disruptions
- Behaviorism's influence: only external behavior studied, internal phenomena dismissed
- Limited research on human emotions: relied mostly on Charles Darwin's observations and facial expressions
Hidden Phenomena:
- Volunteered at a sleep laboratory during high school
- Participants' dreams contained significant emotion: terror, joy, anger, sadness, jealousy, hatred
- Connection between EEG data and dream narratives impressed the author
- Understood that studying the brain is a successful path to understanding the mind.
Headings:
- Background: Emotion vs. Cognition Debate
- Obstacles to Studying Emotions
- Lack of recognition for emotions' role
- Behaviorism's influence
- Limited research on human emotions
- Hidden Phenomena and Understanding the Mind
Important Terms:
- cortical snobbism, cognition, emotion, motivation, limbic region, brain stem, hypothalamus, sleep laboratory, electrodes, electroencephalogram (EEG), polygraph.
- Purely internal mental processes are real and can be studied in the laboratory
- Rejected behaviorist claims that only observable behaviors are valid for psychological study
- Strong suspicion against the behaviorist approach during NYU undergraduate years
- Desire to study inner mental processes as key to understanding human mind and emotions
Challenges and Inspirations
- Disappointment with existing scientific literature on emotion
- Criticism of prevailing model regarding physiological arousal and cognitive appraisal
- Inspiration from William James's perception-based theory of emotion
- Fascination with Darwin's emphasis on distinctive signs of emotions and their physiological profiles
- Convinced that brain is the focus for studying emotion to unlock human mysteries
Graduate School Journey
- Search for a graduate program focusing on brain and emotions
- Attraction towards Stanford University but discouragement from Ernest Hilgard
- Application to The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)
- Interview with Gary Schwartz at Harvard and discussion about Jung's theories
- Eventual acceptance into Harvard's psychology program
- Determination to pursue research on brain basis of emotion despite academic backlash.
Selective Destruction or Stimulation of Brain Regions
- Scientists study emotions by destroying or stimulating specific brain areas to identify correlations
- Most research focuses on the role of hypothalamus, but damage to other regions also reveals insights
Phineas Gage Case
- 19th century railroad foreman experienced damage to his prefrontal cortex after an explosion
- Damage led to erratic behavior and emotional instability
- First evidence suggesting specific brain structures control mental functions, particularly emotions
Library Research in the 1970s
- Research journals existed only in print form, leading to late-night library visits
- Discovered a paper by Guido Gainotti on emotion studies with patients who suffered localized brain damage
Gainotti's Study Findings
- Patients with left hemisphere damage exhibited pathological crying and symptoms of depression
- Patients with right hemisphere damage displayed pathological laughter
Initial Insights and Experiments
- Focused on the role of the left frontal region in positive emotions and its relation to depression
- Conducted experiments using eye movements, EEGs, and brain imaging technology to explore emotional processing in the brain.
Background:
- Paul Ekman: psychologist at UCSF, leading scientist of emotion
- Influenced author's professional development since 1974
- Demonstrated facial expressions for basic emotions are human universals
- Developed detailed system for coding muscle movements in facial signs of emotion (44 independent movements)
Collaboration with Author:
- Met in 1974, talked about emotion research and psychology
- Began collaborating in the early 1980s, focusing on neural correlates of emotions
- Videotaped participants' facial behavior, recorded brain electrical activity using EEG sensors
- Coded facial expressions, determined brain electrical signals corresponding to each instance of facial behavior
Initial Challenges:
- Disappointing results with measuring brain activity during smiling
- Remembered Duchenne's observation: true smiles involve eye muscles
- Reworked analysis based on coding smiles with both eye and cheek muscles (Duchenne smile)
- Data made sense, revealed greater left prefrontal activation during genuine smiles
Implications:
- Importance of accurately identifying facial expressions for emotion research
- Folk wisdom supported: producing a genuine smile leads to increased happiness, proven by brain data.
- Study findings: Activity related to emotions occurred in the prefrontal cortex, challenging previous beliefs about the role of hypothalamus and limbic system
- Collaboration with Nathan Fox: Researcher interested in childhood temperament and development without neurological research background
- Infant study: Recruited thirty-eight ten-month-olds using newspaper ads; used video clips of an actress laughing or crying
- Babies as test subjects: More expressive and less aware of social constraints compared to adults
- Study results: Left frontal activation for positive emotions (laughter) and right frontal activation for negative emotions (crying)
- Publication in Science: Launched field of affective neuroscience
Newborn Study
- Question: Whether the left-right pattern of emotion activity is present from birth or develops during first ten months
- Access to newborns: Collaborating with Nathan Fox, whose lab was near labor and delivery rooms at Roosevelt Hospital
- Research methodology: Ambushed new parents in corridors; used tastes to induce emotions instead of video clips (due to babies' lack of vision and attention)
- Results: Greater left-side prefrontal activation for positive emotion (sugar water) and greater right-side activation for negative emotion (lemon juice)
- Implications: Prefrontal cortex shows functional differences associated with emotions even at birth.
Real World Significance
- Possible impact on behavior: Differences in brain activity within one person and between people could influence real-world emotional responses and behaviors.
Addressing Concerns
- Worry about experiments being artificial and volunteers manipulating results
- Use of babies for research: they cannot understand experiment's purpose and less likely to lie
Study on Infant Emotions (Nathan Fox Collaboration)
- Recruited ten-month-olds using local registry
- Measured baseline brain activity
- Videotaped infants after mother left room
- Babies responded consistently with distress or curiosity
- Baseline measures predicted responses: higher right prefrontal activation for distraught babies
Study on Depression and Brain Activity (First Study)
- Recruited 6 depressed patients and 9 healthy controls
- Recorded baseline brain activity in absence of stimuli
- Depressed participants had less left frontal cortex activation than non-depressed participants
Significance of Findings
- Confirmed: Low left prefrontal activation associated with depression in healthy individuals (as seen in damaged patients)
- Suggested: Left prefrontal region plays role in positive emotions and goal-directed behavior, deficits in these areas seen in depression.
- T.C. Schneirla's argument: approach vs avoidance as fundamental psychological decisions
- Approach: positive emotions with a strong component, e.g., embracing a loved one
- Avoidance: negative emotions or threats, e.g., avoiding an accident scene or intruder
- Evolutionary significance: segregated in different hemispheres to minimize competition
Individual Differences in Emotional Reactions
- Early studies on emotional states and neural differences
- Realization of individual differences in 1989 while reviewing data for a book chapter
- Variability in brain activity between individuals: up to 3,000% difference
- Quantified by activity in the left prefrontal region (happiness)
- Emotional Style concept born from this discovery.
Chapter 3: Assessing Your Emotional Style
Introduction:
- Six elements of Emotional Style introduced
- Self-evaluation of dimensions
- More detailed explanation and assessment methods
Assessment Process:
- Be insightful and honest about behavior and feelings
- Some assessments self-explanatory, others not
- Consult someone close to you for evaluation and reality check
- Questionnaires about yourself followed by evaluations from a close acquaintance
Resilience Dimension:
- Argument with friend: pall on rest of day?
- Flight canceled: reaction and recovery time?
- Vending machine problem: response and duration of upset?
- Loss of someone close: prolonged and profound sadness?
- Normal sadness vs. debilitating despair
- Difficulties in regaining calm and composure.
Recovering from setbacks:
- Can take minutes or hours, depending on the magnitude of the setback
- Measured in lab experiments through eyeblink reflex strength
- Faster recovery indicates greater resilience
Resilient (Fast to Recover):
- Easily shake off negative emotions after a setback
- Confident that setbacks will be resolved
- Ability to sustain positive emotions and maintain an optimistic outlook
Slow to Recover:
- Difficulty shaking off negative emotions after a setback
- Longer recovery time affects stress levels and mood
- Can interfere with functioning in daily life, especially in the case of profound losses or grief.
- Assessing Social Intuition: Measured through brain function and behavior, focusing on eye contact and facial expressions
- Brain Function: Activation in fusiform gyrus and amygdala when processing faces, especially eyes
- Behavioral Measures: Answering true or false questions about noticing subtle social cues
Social Intuition Questions
- I often notice subtle social cues about other people's emotions before they acknowledge them.
- I often find myself observing facial expressions and body language during conversations.
- It does not matter if I talk with someone on the phone or in person for picking up emotional cues.
- I often feel as though I know more about people's true feelings than they do themselves.
- I am often taken by surprise when someone reacts strongly to something I said without apparent reason.
- I prefer to sit across from someone when speaking instead of next to them.
- I frequently respond to another person's discomfort or distress intuitively.
- When observing people in public places, I find myself focusing on their emotions and body language.
- I find it uncomfortable when someone I barely know stares into my eyes during a conversation.
- I can often tell when something is bothering another person just by looking at them.
Scoring: One point for each true answer to questions 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, and 10; one point for each false answer to questions 3, 5, 6, and 9. The higher your score (eight or above), the more Socially Intuitive you are.
Self-Awareness Dimension
- Understanding Emotional Signals: Some people have a hard time recognizing their own emotions and interpreting them correctly
- Self-Opaque vs Self-Aware: People at one extreme may be unaware of their emotional cues, while those at the other end are highly attuned to their feelings and bodies
- Measuring Self-Awareness: One method involves measuring sensitivity to internal physiological signals like heartbeats.
Self-Awareness versus Obliviousness to Social Surround:
Sensitivity to Context:
- Reflects attunement to the social environment
- Important component of Emotional Style
- Intuitive rather than consciously regulated
- Varies enormously among people
- Can be measured by emotional behavior in different contexts and brain measurements, such as hippocampal function and structure
Questions to Determine Sensitivity to Context:
- False: I have been told by someone close to me that I am unusually sensitive to other people’s feelings
- True: I have occasionally been told that I behaved in a socially inappropriate way, which surprised me
- False: I have suffered a setback at work or had a falling-out with a friend because I was too chummy with a superior or too jovial when a good friend was distraught
- True: When I speak with people, they sometimes move back to increase the distance between us
- True: I often find myself censoring what I was about to say because I’ve sensed something in the situation that would make it inappropriate
- True: When I am in a public setting like a restaurant, I am especially aware of modulating how loudly I speak
- True: I have frequently been reminded when in public to avoid mentioning the names of people who might be around
- True: I am almost always aware of whether I have been someplace before, even if it is a highway that I last drove many years ago
- False: I notice when someone is acting in a way that seems out of place, such as behaving too casually at work
- True: I’ve been told by those close to me that I show good manners with strangers and in new situations
Scoring:
- Score one point for each True response to questions 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9
- Score one point for each False response to questions 1, 4, 7, 8, and 10
- A score of eight or higher indicates high Sensitivity to Context
- A score below three indicates low Sensitivity to Context.
Ability to Screen Out Emotional Distractions
- Focused: can concentrate despite emotion-laden intrusions (1 point)
- Unfocused: constantly distracted by emotional impulses (0 points)
Selective Attention
- Ability to focus on one thing and ignore others in a crowded environment (1 point for each instance)
- Enhance input in focused channel, inhibit input in ignored channels (1 point)
Open, Nonjudgmental Awareness
- Capacity to remain receptive to stimuli without judgment (1 point for each instance)
- Generates emotional balance and contentment (1 point)
- Critical for being tuned in to surroundings and own thoughts/emotions (1 point for each dimension it impacts: Self-Awareness, Social Intuition)
Question Answers:
- Emotionally charged stimuli are stronger distractions than neutral stimuli (True)
- Focused people cannot concentrate during emotional turmoil (False)
- Open awareness is a form of focused attention (False)
- Attention is not correlated with emotion (False)
- Emotionally charged sounds command a greater share of our attention than neutral sounds (True)
- Focused people can only focus on one thing at a time (False)
- Open, nonjudgmental awareness requires judgment (False)
- The ability to screen out emotional distractions is not related to other aspects of Emotional Style (False)
- Selective attention and open, nonjudgmental awareness are the same thing (False)
- In the lab, they measure Attention using the attentional blink test (True).
Characteristics:
- Barrage of letters with occasional numbers interrupting
- Increased brain activity when a number appears
- Longer attentional blink with emotional stimuli
- Individuals vary in attentional blink length
Measuring Attention:
- Assess open, nonjudgmental awareness through:
- Letters-and-numbers version
- Emotionally laden or nature scenes variation
- Measure focused attention through tone test
- Participant presses button for specific tone in each ear
- Increased errors indicate insufficient focus
Assessing Attention Style:
- True or False self-assessment questions (see text)
- Scores: Focused (8+), Unfocused (3-)
Emotional Style Assessment:
- Label six lines for each dimension
- Resilience: Fast to Recover, Slow to Recover
- Outlook: Negative, Positive
- Social Intuition: Puzzled, Socially Intuitive
- Self-Awareness: Self-Opaque, Self-Aware
- Sensitivity to Context: Tuned Out, Tuned In
- Attention: Unfocused, Focused
- Mark each line based on questionnaire scores.
- Maybe:
- Negative but Fast to Recover
- Puzzled about social surround
- Self-Opaque
- Unfocused
Understanding Emotional Style
- Knowing emotional style is the first step towards:
- Understanding its impact on health and relationships
- Deciding to shift it
Emotional Style vs. Personality Types
- Focus on six dimensions of Emotional Style
- Based on solid foundation in brain activity patterns
Further Explanation
- Introduction: introduction to emotional style and six dimensions
- Next chapter: explanation of discovery, patterns, and importance of these dimensions.
Understanding Emotional Style: Brain Basis
Background
- In this era of brain research, understanding thoughts and emotions' reflection of brain activity
- Mental images, sentence comprehension, vacation planning all linked to specific brain circuits
- Six dimensions of Emotional Style reflect identifiable brain activity
Brain Basis of Each Dimension
- Resilience:
- Ends: Beaten down by adversity vs. Shrug off setbacks or actively fight back
- Marked by greater left versus right activation in prefrontal cortex
- Left prefrontal region of Resilient person has 30x more activation
- Small study revealed left-right difference in emotional video clips, but needed more solid evidence
Reflecting on Prefrontal Function
- At Madison: Reflected on variations in prefrontal function and role in emotion
- Prefrontal cortex known for highest order cognitive activity, judgment, planning
- Asked how it could play a role in Emotional Style
Next Steps:
- Sought more solid evidence for brain basis of individual differences.
Background
- Large bundles of neurons connect prefrontal cortex and amygdala
- Amygdala involved in negative emotion and distress
- Left prefrontal cortex may inhibit amygdala for rapid recovery from adversity
Experiment Overview
- Forty-seven adults (average age 58) recruited from Wisconsin Longitudinal Study
- Measured brain's electrical activity using electrodes and hairnets
- Baseline brain activity measured for eight minutes with eyes closed and open
- Fifty-one pictures presented, one-third upsetting, one-third happy, one-third neutral
- Startle probes used to measure emotional state and strength of blink
Findings
- Greater left prefrontal cortex activation during baseline correlated with quicker recovery from negative emotions
- Inference: Left prefrontal sends inhibitory signals to amygdala, quieting it down
- Previous research showed less activation in certain prefrontal cortex zones correlates with longer amygdala activity
- Our research indicates left prefrontal activity shortens amygdala activation period
2012 Research Update: White Matter Connection
- More white matter (axons) between prefrontal cortex and amygdala = more resilient
- Fewer highways = less resilient
- Possible to increase connections between regions, detailed in later chapters.
Resilience Continuum
- Slow Recoverers: fewer signals from prefrontal cortex to amygdala (low prefrontal activity or fewer connections)
- Fast Recoverers: strong activation of left prefrontal cortex and strong connections between prefrontal cortex and amygdala.
Resilience:
- Damping down the amygdala allows prefrontal cortex to function effectively without distraction from negative emotions
Social Intuition:
- Key dimension of Emotional Style
- Characterized by:
- Low levels of fusiform activation and high levels of amygdala activation (Puzzled extreme)
- High levels of fusiform activation and low to moderate levels of amygdala activation (Socially Intuitive brain)
Case Study: Timothy
- 13-year-old boy with autism, high-functioning but lacked social intuition
- Monotonic speech lacking intonation contours
- Failure to make eye contact
- Low levels of activation in fusiform face area and increased amygdala activity
- Reduced amygdala activation when looking away from eyes
Social Intuition: Fusiform vs. Amygdala
- Fusiform: specializes in deciphering faces, socially appropriate behavior
- Amygdala: processes negative emotions and social signals, associated with anxiety and fear
Oxytocin's Role
- Reduces activation in the amygdala
- Induces feelings of commitment and attachment
Social Intuition: Context Sensitivity
- Identified through research on rhesus monkeys exhibiting anxious temperament (freezing behavior)
- Sensitivity to context is a dimension of Emotional Style, characterized by the ability to adapt emotional responses based on situational demands.
- Three monkeys froze when alone, indicating lack of context awareness
- Abnormal response to familiar situations: home in the monkey colony
- Hippocampus involved in attuning behavior to context
- Low hippocampal activity = Tuned Out, high activity = Tuned In
- Importance of distinguishing familiar from unfamiliar contexts
The Hippocampus and Context Processing
- Hippocampus: forms long-term memories, regulates behavior in context
- Anterior hippocampus (closest to amygdala) regulates behavioral inhibition
- Disorders of disrupted context: PTSD, confusion between safe and dangerous situations
- Diminished hippocampus volume = loss of contextual memory
- Stronger connections from hippocampus to prefrontal cortex increase sensitivity to context.
Self-Awareness and the Insula
- Insula: brain's monitoring station for internal sensations
- Viscerotopic map in insula receives signals from visceral organs
- Higher insula activity = greater self-awareness, lower activity = lower self-awareness.
Historical Background:
- Early brain function studies used EEG, with sensors on scalp detecting electrical brain activity
- Intact human brain research was limited
- Around 1995, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) developed as method of choice
- fMRI: Better spatial resolution, measures subcortical regions like amygdala
- fMRI uses same equipment as standard MRI, with software to analyze brain activity from blood oxygenation changes
Identifying Aspects of Positive Emotion in Depression
- Research question: Identify specific aspects of positive emotion lacking in depression
- Aaron Heller joined research team in 2005
- Previous study in 1992 showed depressed patients responded similarly to happy film clips as non-depressed participants
- Goal: Test difference in sustained positive emotion
Study Design:
- Volunteers: Depressed and healthy individuals
- Advertised for volunteers through local media sources
- Prepared volunteers with mock MRI experience
- Real MRI scans with headphones and microphone
- Projected joyful images on ceiling of tube, volunteers viewed and responded to instructions (enhance or sustain emotion)
- 72 images presented over 45 minutes
- Monitored participants' brain activity in control room
- Data analysis: Activation in reward circuit, centered in ventral striatum.
Significant Findings:
- Initially, both depressed and healthy individuals showed activation in the brain's reward circuit when viewing joyful images.
- However, the pattern of sustained positive emotion differed between groups:
- Depressed participants: Brain activity returned to baseline more quickly after image disappeared
- Healthy participants: Brain activity remained elevated for longer periods
- This study suggests that one key difference in depression could be a deficit in sustaining positive emotions.
Reward Processing Circuit
- Consists of prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens in the ventral striatum
- Prefrontal cortex transmits instructions to intensify and maintain happy feelings
- Nucleus accombens is critical for motivation and generating a sense of reward
- Activation in reward-processing circuit predicts intensity of positive emotion
- Healthy volunteers showed sustained activation; depressed patients did not
Function of the Nucleus Accumbens
- Receives signals from prefrontal cortex
- Involved in motivation, positive emotion, and desire
- Contains neurons releasing or capturing dopamine and endogenous opiates
Selective Attention
- Ability to focus on certain features of environment and ignore others
- Key building block for Self-Awareness and Tuned In emotional styles
- Failure to selectively attend can make it impossible to be emotionally aware
Open, Nonjudgmental Awareness
- Ability to take in signals from external and internal sources
- Sensitively pick up on subtle cues without getting stuck
- Relevant to emotional style; important for broadening attention and sensitivity.
Function of the Prefrontal Cortex
- Transmits instructions to nucleus accumbens to maintain happy feeling
- Important in focusing attention through enhancing attended signals and inhibiting ignored ones
- Signals from prefrontal cortex crucial for sustained activation in reward processing circuit.
Tellegen Absorption Scale:
- Measures individual's ability to become fully absorbed in their surroundings
- Correlated with brain activity in visual and somatosensory cortices during focused tasks
- Those with high absorption scores show stronger selective attention
Prefrontal Cortex Role:
- Guides selective attention by boosting relevant signals and attenuating irrelevant ones
- Enhanced prefrontal cortex synchronization with external stimuli leads to stable, focused attention
- Importance of prefrontal cortex in regulation of selective attention confirmed through EEG studies
Open, Nonjudgmental Awareness:
- Determines noticing ability during the Attentional Blink task
- High degree of open, nonjudgmental awareness allows for notice of both first and second stimuli
- Brain basis: balanced P300 signal indicating appropriate investment in stimuli
Brain Findings:
- Strong phase-locking and moderate activation of P300 signal at Focused extreme of Attention dimension
- Little phase-locking and weak or extremely strong P300 signal at Unfocused extreme
Key Takeaways:
- Clear neuronal activity pattern underlies each Emotional Style dimension.
- Brain findings on attention reveal the importance of regions previously thought to have minimal significance in emotion research.
- Emotion and cognition intertwined
- Overlapping circuitry in emotional and rational brains
- Emotion enhances cognitive abilities:
- Concentration
- Social navigation
- Creative thinking
- Sustained interest
- Emotion facilitates, not interrupts or disrupts
- Emotion permeates all aspects of life
- Blurred lines between emotion and other mental processes
- Virtually all brain regions involved in emotion regulation
Neural Organization of Emotion
- Brain signatures of emotional style dimensions not necessarily innate
- Assumptions about emotional style being inherent challenged
[Note: The text mentions the next chapter, but since we are only asked to create bulleted notes from this excerpt and not include additional information from other chapters, it should be left out.]
Emotional Style Development
Background
- Newborns exhibit distinct personalities, suggesting genetic influences
- Research on identical and fraternal twins reveals genetic contribution to:
- Shyness and sociability (Social Intuition)
- Emotionality (Resilience and Outlook)
- Distress tendency (Resilience)
- Adaptability (Sensitivity to Context)
- Impulsivity (Attention)
- Balance of positive and negative emotions
- Heritability of emotional traits: 20% to 60%
Genetic Determinism vs. Blank Slate
- Genetic determinists view any non-100% as low
- Blank slate theorists see even 20% genetic influence as high
- Comparison with sickle-cell disease (100% heritability) and religion (close to zero heritability)
Twin Studies on Emotional Traits
- Identical twins are twice as genetically similar as non-twin siblings
- Increased similarity in emotional traits between identical twins compared to fraternal ones
- Genetic influences on emotional style dimensions: shyness, sociability, emotionality, distress tendency, adaptability, impulsivity, positive and negative emotions.
- Heritability of these traits varies from 20% to 60%.
- Pioneered study of behavioral inhibition as a form of anxiety, similar to shyness
- Children with this temperament are hypervigilant, constantly looking for potential threats
- Heightened amygdala activation in young adults with strong behavioral inhibition
- Behavioral inhibition is a stable feature of temperament from childhood to adulthood
- Popular belief: genetically based psychological traits equal unchangeable for life
- Revolution in genetics: genes can be turned on or off by experiences, environment (nurture affects nature)
MAOA Gene Study:
- Men with short form of MAOA gene produce low amounts of MAOA enzyme
- Linked to aggression due to slower neurotransmitter breakdown
- Men with short form tend to have hair-trigger response to threats, as measured by amygdala activity
- The Dutch family study showed 14 men with the same short MAOA gene and history of impulsive, aggressive crimes.
Implications:
- Genetically based traits can be altered by experiences and environments
- Nurture can affect nature, challenging the belief that genetics equals unchangeable.
- MAOA gene linked to violence and antisocial behavior
- Headlines warned of "violence in the blood"
- New Zealand study identified 442 males with MAOA status
- No statistically significant association between MAOA gene status and antisocial behavior
- Those with low-activity MAOA and a history of child abuse were more likely to exhibit antisocial behavior
- Genes alone do not increase the risk of delinquency and criminality; environment plays a role
Serotonin Transporter Gene and Depression:
- Serotonin transporter gene linked to depression
- Study on New Zealanders showed no statistically significant association between short version of gene and depression for those without stressful life events in their early twenties
Gene Expression and Environment:
- Genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger
- Early experiences can affect gene expression
Michael Meaney's Research on Rats:
- Some rats are more sensitive to stress hormones (glucocorticoids)
- This sensitivity is due to their brains containing more glucocorticoid receptors in the hippocampus
- Maternal care affects gene expression: Rats with attentive mothers have fewer receptors and are less sensitive to stress hormones.
Impact of Maternal Care:
- Licking and grooming by mothers affects baby rats' stress response and behavior
- Pups with attentive mothers become laid-back, curious, and resilient
- Pups with neglectful mothers become fearful and stressed out
Assumptions Challenged:
- Anxiety or mellowness thought to be inherited, but nurture trumps nature
Mother Swap Experiment:
- Meaney conducted an adoption experiment: neurotic mothers raised pups born to mellow ones and vice versa
- Result: nurture played a significant role in offspring behavior and parenting style
Hormone-receptor Genes and Early Life Experiences:
- The glucocorticoid-receptor gene is more active in pups raised by attentive mothers
- A mother rat's licking and grooming turns on the gene, while neglect keeps it off
- Gene methylation plays a role: neglectful mothers cause methyl groups to sit on the gene and silence it
Impact of Childhood Abuse on Humans:
- Meaney studied suicide brains at the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank
- Found that abused suicides had more methylation "off" switches on the glucocorticoid-receptor gene
- Altered expression impairs ability to cope with adversity and increases vulnerability to suicide.
Impact of Environment on Gene Expression:
- Genes' expression strongly influenced by environment
- Epigenetic changes do not alter gene sequence (A, T, C, G) but affect gene expression
- Presence of a methyl group on DNA = epigenetic change
Explanation of Epigenetics:
- Silences or activates genes
- May explain low concordance for certain conditions, such as schizophrenia, in identical twins
- Identical twins have similar epigenetic profiles at birth but accumulate differences throughout life due to experiences and random chance
Longitudinal Study on Emotional Style:
- Focused on behavioral inhibition (trait linked to Resilience dimension of Emotional Style)
- Assumed children's emotional styles are inborn and unchanging
- Conducted a study using birth announcements from local newspaper to recruit participants
- 368 children, aged three, participated
- Evaluated their reactions to a remote-control robot named Robie
Study Results:
- Children's reactions varied greatly
- Some (like Sam) approached and interacted freely with the robot
- Others (like Will) froze and remained vigilant
- These differences indicated that children's emotional styles could change over time
Implications of the Study:
- Emotional styles are not fixed or immutable but influenced by experiences and environment.
Background:
- Study on how behavioral inhibition of toddlers persists into late childhood using Robie the Robot as a tool for assessment
- Previous research suggested that temperament is fixed, but concerns were raised about methodology
Three-Year-Old Assessment:
- Identified 70 children out of 368: shy (Will), bold (Sam), and those in between
- Tested for behavioral inhibition with Robie the Robot
Six Months Later:
- Asked families back to the lab for baseline EEG measurements
Methodological Concerns:
- Parental evaluations: potential for pigeonholing children based on initial observations
- Number of words in child's utterances as a measure of shyness questioned
Nine-Year-Old Assessment:
- Children placed in three situations to assess behavioral inhibition:
- Stranger present
- Wolf mask interaction
- Risk room with threatening playthings
- EEG measurements taken for each child
Findings:
- Behavioral inhibition was not a stable, enduring trait
- Correlation between behavioral inhibition at age three and age nine: .03
- Children's groups randomly distributed: one-third stayed in same group, two-thirds moved around
EEG Measurements:
- No significant correlation between EEG patterns at ages three and nine (<0.1)
Conclusion:
- Temperament is not a fixed trait; children's behavior and brain activity can change significantly over time.
Findings:
- Children's brain function patterns and behavioral inhibition showed more change than stability between ages three and nine
- Once-shy children became bold, and once-bold children became shy for two-thirds of the kids
- Brain changes occurred beneath shifts in temperament
Implications:
- Traits like shyness or boldness may not be as stable as previously thought
- Changes can occur through teaching coping skills, exposure to new situations, and understanding individual differences
Story of Will and Sam:
- Will, a fear-frozen toddler, became less shy due to nurturing teachers and an outgoing younger sister
- Sam, an outgoing child, became more inhibited after his father's hospitalizations
Further Exploration:
- Gene expression studies could provide insight into how "shyness genes" change over time.
Maureen’s Perspective:
- Shifted focus from viewing temperament as a problem to understanding and advocating for children
- Encouraged parents not to medicate their child but instead help them cope with their differences.
Discoveries about Emotional Style:
- Temperament and Emotional Style can be modulated by environmental circumstances
- Stability of temperamental characteristic, such as behavioral inhibition, varies among individuals
- Some people exhibit stable trait persistence from toddlerhood into early adolescence (15%), while others do not
Impact of Environment on Gene Expression:
- New environmental circumstances can alter gene expression by turning genes "on" or "off"
- Relaxed and nurturing environment can influence genetic predispositions, such as anxiety or shyness
Study Limitations:
- No precise way to sample human brain tissue for stress-hormone receptors
- Can only study brain plasticity in people who donate their brains to research
Environment and Brain Development:
- Brain's features, such as EEG activity patterns, can undergo radical change during development
- Discoveries about Emotional Style provide foundation for parents and teachers to identify and shape a child's temperament
Intrauterine Environment and Health:
- New studies suggest that intrauterine environment affects physical health (heart disease, adult illnesses)
- Potential effect on emotions, personality, and temperament yet to be shown.
The Mind-Brain-Body Connection and Emotional Style's Impact on Health
Introduction:
- Emotions influence health: physiological reactions
- Feelings trigger responses below the neck
- Emotional Style influences various aspects of life, including physical health
- Relationship between emotions and physical health explored in psychosomatic medicine
Historical Perspective:
- Early physicians used pulse rate to diagnose "lovesickness"
- Belief that emotional state leaves a mark on physiology
Impact of Emotional Style on Health:
- Anxiety raises blood pressure and heart rate
- Contentment strengthens immune system
- Susceptibility to stress, cognitive function, psychiatric disorders, and physical health all affected by Emotional Style
Significance of Emotional Style on Physical Health:
- Most powerful influence on physical health
- Affects respiratory, immune, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and endocrine systems
- Ancient physicians recognized the connection between emotions and health centuries ago.
Erasistratus' Observation
- Young man exhibited symptoms of love when in presence of Stratonice: blushing, sweating, irregular pulse, etc. (Plutarch)
- Conclusion: infatuation with Stratonice caused Sappho's symptoms and determination to die rather than reveal feelings
Behavioral Medicine vs Psychosomatic Medicine
- Also known as mind-body medicine but pejorative connotation implying symptoms are all in the head
- Now called behavioral medicine or health psychology
Social Isolation and Health
- Increases cortisol, raises blood pressure, weakens immune system on average
- Some outliers may experience no adverse effects or even benefits
Emotional Style and Health
- Emotions have physiological consequences
- Studies show emotional state predicts health problems
- Brain activity associated with emotions influences health and illness
- More research needed to understand the brain-body connection and its impact on health
Importance of Brain-Based Analysis in Behavioral Medicine
- Impressive evidence documenting role of psychosocial factors in illness, but lacking mechanistic analysis
- Need more research connecting brain activity with physical changes that affect health
- Suggests individuals can control feelings and thoughts for better physical health
- Call to take the mind more seriously in understanding causes of disease and prevention/treatment.
Background
- In 2005, two health psychologists found twenty times more studies on depression and health than happiness and health. (Sleptoon & Lyubomirsky, 2005)
- Psychologists began studying the effects of positive emotions on health due to inconsistent results from earlier research.
Assessing Positive Emotions: The Challenge
- Measuring overall well-being is unreliable as it's influenced by external factors and people's assessments change based on these factors. (Steptoe & Marmot, 2005)
- Researchers used Kahneman's methodology to measure emotional traits (happiness levels), which involved aggregating momentary experiences. (Kahneman, Diener, & Schkade, 1999)
Health Benefits of Positive Emotions
- Positive emotions are linked to lower cortisol and fibrinogen levels and a lower heart rate. (Steptoe & Marmot, 2005)
- Higher positive emotion levels lead to better health outcomes, such as fewer colds and longer life expectancy. (Cohen, Tyrrell, Dwyer, & Smith, 1991; Snowdon, 1982; Mesa et al., 2006)
- Positive emotions may influence health through better self-care habits and social ties. (Cohen, 2004)
Positive Emotions and Disease Outcomes
- Some studies link positive emotions to better disease outcomes in patients with treatable conditions like breast cancer, coronary heart disease, and AIDS. (Peterson, 1987; Seligman, Ernst, et al., 2009)
- Positive emotions may be detrimental for those with advanced diseases that have poor prognoses, such as metastatic melanoma or breast cancer and end-stage renal disease. (Friedman & Boas, 2008)
Mechanisms Behind the Relationship between Positive Emotions and Health
- Positive emotions may influence health indirectly through better self-care habits and social ties.
- There are plausible biological mechanisms, such as lower cortisol levels, which could contribute to the relationship between positive emotions and health. (Miller et al., 2009)
- Further research is needed to understand the underlying mechanisms and to determine if positive emotions lead to better health outcomes or if they are merely markers of good health.
Physical and Mental Health Enhancements:
- Increase ability to fight off disease and decline
- Dampen cardiovascular system and neuroendocrine system
- Lower heart rate (marker of good cardiovascular health)
- Reduce blood pressure, stroke risk
- Lower blood levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine
- Increase growth hormone, prolactin, and oxytocin levels
- Activate thymus and lymph nodes, releasing infection-fighting cells
- Decrease stress hormones like cortisol
Body-to-Brain Connection:
- Communication between mind and body is bidirectional
- Brain uses feedback from the body in information processing
Experiment: Botox and Facial Feedback Hypothesis
- Study tested forty-one women who received Botox injection to erase frown lines (corrugator muscle)
- Women could not make facial expressions that signify anger or sadness after the injection
- Results showed it took longer for women to read angry and sad sentences post-Botox, as expected
- No difference in reading time for happy sentences.
Impact of Facial Expressions on Brain Functioning:
- Women unable to frown or make sad expressions may experience deprived signals to insula and somatosensory cortex
- Impacts language areas in the left hemisphere where meaning is decoded
- Bidirectionality between brain and body plays a significant role
Asthma as a Model for Mind-Brain-Body Connections:
- Three requirements: Objective biological effects, psychosocial factors, major public health concern
- Discovered collaboration with asthma expert William Busse
- Psychological stress exacerbates asthma symptoms and affects brain's emotion circuits
Stressful Events and Asthma:
- Complex cognitive processing required to understand and feel stressed
- Stress worsens physiological response to allergens, causing increased lung inflammation
- Cortisol plays a role: Increases but immune cells become less responsive to it
Exploring the Relationship Between Stress and Asthma:
- Developed asthma version of Stroop task to induce stress
- Naming color in dissonant words takes longer, similar to emotional Stroop test
- Researching patterns of brain activity affecting airway obstruction and lung inflammation in asthma.
Background:
- Longer reaction time to name color of emotionally charged words in patients with anxiety disorders
- Stroop test used to measure brain activity in response to asthma-related words
- Study recruited six asthmatic patients, no one knew which substance they inhaled
Findings:
- Increased activation in insula and anterior cingulate cortex in response to asthma words for asthmatics
- Greater activation in these regions after inhalation of allergen compared to saline or methacholine
- Strongest brain response correlated with worst lung inflammation
- Sensitive asthmatics show heightened response to asthma-relevant stressors (Slow to Recover)
Implications:
- Asthmatics differ in sensitivity to asthma-related stressors
- Overactivation of insula and anterior cingulate cortex exacerbates inflammation
- Possibility of using mindfulness meditation as a treatment approach
Emotional Style and Health:
- State of mind affects state of body
- Emotions influence physiology and health
- Prefrontal cortex asymmetry: positive emotions = left > right, negative emotions = right > left activation.
Background:
- Research on mice revealed different immune effects based on left or right cortical damage
- Inspired by this, study examined association between brain activity and human immune function
Participants:
- Twenty undergraduates with lopsided frontal activation (extreme left or right)
Results:
- Higher NK cell activity associated with greater left frontal activation
- People with high left frontal activation had up to 50% higher NK cell activity
Confirmation:
- Repeated study with similar results
- Greater left frontal activity associated with stronger immune response
Significance:
- Antibody levels of extreme left-siders averaged four times that of extreme right-siders
- Stronger immune response reduces flu risk
The Heart-Brain Connection
Background:
- Scientists skeptical about emotional impact on heart function via MRI
- Decided to use electric shocks to induce fear and observe heart changes
Challenges:
- Cardiac MRI designed for disease assessment, not emotional effects
- Ethical concerns over using electric shock in studies
Conclusion: The research indicates a connection between brain activity (left frontal activation) and immune function (higher NK cell activity), as well as heart health. These findings suggest the potential for mental states to influence both the immune system and cardiac function, which can have significant clinical implications.
Background
- Colleagues' skepticism about emotional impact on heart
- "Threat of shock" procedure instead of actual shocks
- Recruited 23 college students
Procedure
- Explained simple geometric shapes in MRI tube
- Diamond: potential shock, mild zap
- Circle: no worry
- Measured brain activity and heart contractility
- Found significant differences in neural activation and contractility based on shape
Findings
- 40% of variation in contractility due to insula and prefrontal cortex response
- Heightened brain activity led to increased cardiac contractility
- Emotional styles linked to health risks for healthcare providers
- Body influences mind through emotional processing
Embodied Mind
- Brain engages in bidirectional communication with body
- Emotions are embodied, affecting physiology and health
- Brain circuits underlying emotional styles connect to immune system, endocrine system, autonomic nervous system
- Understanding emotional style crucial for assessing health risks
- Body can be an ally in transforming emotion through practices like hatha yoga
- Research on body-to-brain connection still ongoing.
Normal Emotional Style vs. Pathology
- No single ideal emotional style
- Variations in Emotional Style serve society well by providing complementary strengths
- Extreme emotional styles can interfere with daily functioning, becoming pathological
Emotional Normalcy
- Emotionally normal is relative
- Society advances due to individuals at different points on the Emotional Style spectrum
Examples of Normal Emotional Styles in Society:
- Puzzled (Social Intuition): Appreciation for technology and machines, less interest in interacting with people
- Secret Service Agents (Socially Intuitive): High sensitivity to nonverbal cues and the environment, critical for preventing political assassinations
- Successful teachers and effective leaders: Fast to Recover, Positive Outlook, Socially Intuitive, and Tuned In to respond appropriately in social situations
Pathological Emotional Styles
- Extreme emotional styles may interfere with daily functioning
- Similar concept to physical health measures like blood pressure or cholesterol levels
Emotional Style Spectrum Continuum:
- Normal: Variations that serve society and contribute complementary strengths
- Pathological: Extreme variations that hinder daily functioning
Emotional Style Shapes Vulnerability to Mental Illness:
- Emotional Style does not cause mental illness but interacts with other factors
- Disturbances in emotional function underlie mood and anxiety disorders
- Emotional disturbances central to schizophrenia and autism
Understanding the Continuum Between Normal and Abnormal:
- Current diagnosis based on yes-or-no approach
- Arbitrary definition of disorders
- Neuroscientifically grounded continua approach
Anhedonia as an Example:
- Negative symptom of schizophrenia, characterized by inability to feel joy or happiness
- Anhedonia places someone at extreme Negative end of the Outlook spectrum
- Emotional Style contributes to schizophrenia and other disorders with problems in positive emotions.
Background:
- Interest in autism sparked by daughter's experience with an autistic girl, Molly
- Classical description includes triad of symptoms: social interaction disturbances, communication problems, stereotyped behaviors
Social Interaction and Social Intuition:
- Gaze aversion observed consistently among individuals on the autism spectrum
- Lack of eye contact results in poor social intuition
- Eye region crucial for social communication due to transmission of emotional signals
Impact of Poor Social Intuition:
- Difficulty understanding irony, sarcasm, or humor
- Misinterpretation of literal meaning of words and behavior
- Perplexity with the social world around them
Possible Causes:
- Some studies suggest a fundamental abnormality in the fusiform gyrus
Theory:
- Poor social intuition may not result from a specific emotion processing deficit in the brain
- Instead, it might be due to avoiding eye contact and missing emotional cues
- Learning to look at people's eyes could help improve social and emotional functioning for individuals on the autism spectrum.
Discovery of Fusiform Gyrus' Role in Face Perception
- Region of brain activated by faces in humans and primates
- Misinterpreted as being specialized for face perception only
Follow-up Studies
- Fusiform gyrus reacts to objects of expertise, not just faces
- Inaccurate conclusions drawn due to human bias towards classifying faces
Autistic Children and Fusiform Gyrus Activity
- Lower activity in fusiform gyrus during face perception tasks
- Suspected lack of input, as children may avoid looking at faces
Study on Neural Correlates of Face Perception in Autism
- First study to measure eye movements while children perform face perception task using fiber-optic goggles
- Autistic children spent 20% less time looking into eyes of faces, explaining lower fusiform gyrus activity
Important Findings
- Nothing inherently wrong with fusiform gyrus in autism
- Greater amygdala activity during face perception tasks in some autistic children.
Impact of Eye Contact for Autistic Children:
- Elevated amygdala activity when looking at faces, even for brief periods
- Looking away from eyes reduces anxiety and fear
- Aversion to eye contact may hinder social information acquisition
Genetic Component of Autism:
- Strong heritability with a background prevalence of 1%
- Increased likelihood for siblings of autistic children (3%)
- Identical twins have high concordance rates (63-98%)
- No definitive autism genes identified, but many suspects
Eye-Tracking Patterns in Siblings:
- Reduced gaze aversion from eyes compared to autistic siblings
- Increased amygdala activity and reduced gaze on eye region versus typically developing children
- Variability in amygdala activity within typical population
Depression: A Complex Emotional Disorder
- Depression characterized by pervasive sadness and despair
- Inability to experience positive emotions, such as pleasure or satisfaction
- Consequences include difficulty planning, anticipating future, performing goal-directed action.
Brain Taxonomy of Depression:
- Depression marked by more than just sadness
- Research identifies additional hallmarks: inability to feel positive emotions and plan for the future
- No clear divide between normal and abnormal emotional styles.
Different Forms of Depression:
- People with depression exhibit aberrant patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions
- Not one single type of depression exists, but multiple subtypes
Subgroups of Depressed Patients:
- Slow to Recover: Difficulty recovering from adversity
- Reflects lower levels of left-side prefrontal activation
- Have difficulty turning off negative emotions once they are turned on
- Tuned Out: Difficulty regulating emotions in a context-appropriate way
- Prevented from having rewarding social interactions, leading to depression
- Smaller hippocampus (key brain region for processing context)
- Unable to Sustain Positive Emotions
- Inability to maintain any positive emotion means they can never savor life's ups
- Quicker recovery from adversity not guaranteed
- Characteristic pattern of brain activity: quiescent nucleus accumbens and little connectivity with the prefrontal cortex
Research on Depression:
- Little research into emotional processing in patients with depression
- Focus has been on medication instead of understanding the neural basis of depression
- Study on cognitive reappraisal: healthy controls maintained activation in nucleus accumbens, but depressed patients' activity declined rapidly
- Middle prefrontal gyrus remained active but stopped sending signals to the nucleus accumbens
Neurally Inspired Behavioral Therapy:
- Goal is to alter aberrant brain activity associated with mental illness through mental training and therapy
- Medication and therapy have shown some success, but neurally inspired behavioral therapy shows more promise in minimizing relapse and cost-effectiveness.
Attention and ADHD:
- Three varieties of ADHD: Inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, or both
- Core problem: impairments in circuits that underlie attention and response inhibition
- Brain imaging shows underactive inferior prefrontal cortex (impulse-inhibiting center)
- Poor neural synchrony in ADHD group.
Behavioral Training for ADHD:
- Few studies on behavioral methods for training attention but promising results
- Children with ADHD showed significant gains on several objective measures of attention after eight one-hour sessions of attention training
- Need more research to identify changes in neural activity.
Neuroplasticity and Emotional Style
Misconception about Emotional Style
- People often assume Emotional Style is fixed and genetically based
Challenging the Dogma of a Fixed Brain
- Neuroscience dogma that adult brain is essentially fixed is incorrect
- Introducing neuroplasticity: the ability to change brain structure and activity patterns
Change through Experiences
- Blind individuals learning Braille experience structural and functional changes in their brains
- Visual cortex takes on job of processing tactile sensations from fingers
- Change due to intensive, repeated learning experiences
Change through Internal Mental Activity
- Thoughts and intentions can lead to brain changes
- Athletes' mental imagery expands motor cortex regions controlling required movements
- Cognitive-behavior therapy can quiet overactivity in the "worry circuit" of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Historical Context:
- One-to-one correspondence between brain structure and function believed since 1861
- Precise mapping of brain regions led to structure-function relationships, e.g., Brodmann areas
- Somatosensory cortex map: body parts assigned specific spots for processing
- Discoveries of Brodmann, Penfield, and others
Hardwired Beliefs:
- Brain believed to be fixed and immutable based on these discoveries
- Mental illnesses assumed to result from hardwired underactivity or overactivity in certain brain areas
- Change at the cellular level acknowledged but wholesale changes considered impossible
Challenging the Status Quo:
- Silver Spring Monkeys controversy: monkeys had gnawed off fingers due to severed sensory nerves, not mistreatment
- Edward Taub's experiments showed that animals could still move limbs without sensation
- Debunked belief in hardwired brain functions and structure-function relationships.
Neuroplasticity:
- Ability for the brain to change by forming new neural connections throughout life
- Challenge to the fixed view of the adult brain
- Implications for understanding mental illnesses, learning, aging, and injury recovery.
Introduction:
- Controversial argument for studying brains of deceased monkeys
- Somatosensory cortex reorganization after sensory deprivation
Monkey Studies:
- Study in 1991: Enlarged somatosensory cortex regions processing facial signals
- UCSF Study (Spinning Disk Experiment): Monkeys developed heightened finger sensitivity, resulting in a fourfold increase of somatosensory cortex area for the trained fingers
Structure-Function Relationships:
- Not hardwired; brain's physical layout is shaped by an animal's behavior and experiences
Human Experiences:
- Blind or Deaf People: Compensatory reorganization, such as auditory cortex processing visual signals and visual cortex processing language
- Blindfold Experiment: Normal adult brains can exhibit similar plasticity when deprived of sensory input and exposed to intense stimuli
Brain Plasticity in Clinical Applications:
- Important consequences of understanding the brain's ability to change, e.g., therapeutic approaches for neurological conditions and injuries.
Conclusion:
- Neuroscientific discoveries challenge beliefs about hardwired brain functions; plasticity plays a significant role in how our brains process sensory information.
Taub's Discoveries:
- Taub faced criticism for mistreating monkeys but later used their neuroplasticity findings to develop constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT)
- CIMT helps stroke patients regain function by forcing use of affected limb through immobilization of the healthy one
Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy (CIMT):
- Patients wear a sling and oven mitt, forcing them to use their paralyzed arm
- Intensive training involves manipulating objects and performing daily living activities
- Improvement observed in recent and long-term stroke patients
- Brain imaging reveals significant reorganization of healthy brain areas taking over functions of damaged regions
Forms of Neuroplasticity:
- Motor cortex assumes function of disabled region
- Premotor cortex takes over for damaged motor cortex
- Dramatic reorganization: Corresponding region in the left motor cortex takes over, affecting right arm movement
Evidence for Neuroplasticity:
- Studies on violinists and their increased somatosensory cortex size demonstrate neuroplastic changes due to intense musical practice
- Neuroplasticity allows the brain to adapt to new demands and break genetically determined blueprint
Continuous Brain Remodeling:
- The human brain is not immutable or static, but continually adapts to the world around it
- External sensory and motor signals cause changes in the brain (violinists, stroke patients)
- Internal thought processes also contribute to neuroplasticity (future discussion).
Chapter 1: The Mind's Power to Change the Brain
- Mindfulness: a mental training technique used in Buddhist meditation practice
- Jeffrey Schwartz of UCLA applied mindfulness to treat Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- OCD characterized by hyperactivity in the orbital frontal cortex and striatum, forming the "worry circuit"
- Resulting in upsetting, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and compulsive behaviors
- Brain imaging shows OCD's neural patterns
- Mindfulness-based therapy: teaching patients to observe thoughts without judgment
- Reducing emotional reaction to OCD symptoms
- Neuroimaging showed reduced activity in the orbital frontal cortex
Clinical Depression and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
- Clinical depression: overactivity in specific regions of the frontal cortex, underactivity in limbic system
- Characterized by an inability to experience joy and interest
- Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT): a form of mental training focusing on healthy responses to emotions, thoughts, and behaviors
- Teaching patients to reappraise dysfunctional thinking and respond to setbacks without catastrophizing
- Effectiveness of CBT: reducing activity in the frontal cortex and increasing activity in the limbic system
- Patients ruminate less and experience improved mood
- Relapse rates: lower with cognitive-behavior therapy compared to medication for mild to moderate depression.
Summary
- The brain can change due to experiences and mental activities (meditation, CBT)
- Mindfulness and CBT are examples of mental training techniques that alter brain activity
- Resulting in improved emotional response, reduced rumination, and overall mood improvement.
Dan Goleman at Harvard
- Attracted to Harvard due to presence of Dan Goleman
- Wrote papers on meditation and consciousness in Journal of Transpersonal Psychology (1971-1972)
- Unconventional research topics for psychology graduate student at mainstream Harvard
- Met Dan during psychophysiology class
- Scruffy-looking, Jewish Afro, Volkswagen microbus covered in holy men images
- Invited to his house, met household including Ram Dass and David McClelland
- Fascinated by the community's emotional styles and meditation practice
- Desire to learn more about meditation intensified
- Announced plans to go to India for 3 months to study meditation
- Convince National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund the trip:
- Study relationship between meditation, attention, and emotion
- Firsthand experience of meditation in its origin cultures.
The McClelland Household
- Resilient, kind, positive people with remarkable equanimity
- Weekly meditation sessions led by Ram Dass
- Unconventional community: handmade clothes, communal meals, meditation sessions
- Inspired by their emotional styles and passion for meditation.
Convincing NSF to Fund the Trip to India
- Needed funding for plane tickets and living expenses
- Argued for studying relationship between meditation, attention, and emotion
- Emphasized importance of firsthand experience in meditation's origin cultures.
Kandy, Sri Lanka (May 1974)
- Traveled with Susan, future obstetrician
- Stayed with Dan Goleman and family in Kandy
- Practiced meditation with Dan in mornings
- Visited monasteries for meetings with monks
- Welcoming locals, but witnessed racial tensions
- Casual racism towards Tamil minority
- Civil war between Sinhalese and Tamils erupted in 1983
Dalhousie, India (July 1974)
- Ten days meditation retreat
- Traveled to Dalhousie by bus and train
- Bushes got stuck on washed-out road, forced to climb over rubble to reach other side
- Intense meditation program with long hours and silence
- Woke up at 4:30 AM, practiced vipassana (verbal communication prohibited)
- President Nixon resigned during the retreat
Vipassana Meditation
- Focus on bodily sensations to change perception of pain
- Not conceptualizing pain as aversive or unpleasant
- Instead, focus on sensations such as tingling in feet or pressure in knees.
- Mind learns not to react negatively to pain
- Difficult to adopt this attitude naturally.
Travel Challenges
- Delayed travel plans due to monsoons and washed-out roads
- Bus journey was dangerous, with boulders falling and mudslides.
- Navigated hairpin turns and slick inclines backward on mountain roads.
- Accommodations were basic with no running water or electricity.
- Attended Goenka's lecture, where he encouraged participants to stay for another day despite their pain
- Susan, a participant, stayed and adopted nonjudgmental awareness of her pain, leading to a significant shift in perception
- Observed the potential benefits of meditation for psychology and neuroscience
Early Research on Meditation
- Beginning of third year in graduate school, started researching meditation
- Conducted study with Dan Goleman, finding more meditation experience associated with less anxiety and greater attentional ability
- Acknowledged potential predispositions as a limitation
- Met with disdain from some colleagues and faced challenges due to lack of advanced neuroscientific tools at the time
Personal Meditation Practice
- Practiced daily, alternating between open-presence and compassion meditation
- Found it beneficial despite having a demanding work schedule
Writing a Letter to the Dalai Lama
- In 1992, wrote a letter to the Dalai Lama proposing a study on how thousands of hours of meditation affect brain structure or function
- Hoping to measure lasting changes similar to measuring the strength of a bodybuilder's biceps when not lifting weights
- Faced the challenge of getting cooperation from meditators living in seclusion.
Background
- Dalai Lama's interest in science and engineering since childhood
- Recently became interested in neuroscience
- Difficulty reaching out to meditating hermits and lamas
- Designated a monk as liaison
- Traveled to India with Cliff Saron, Francisco Varela, and Alan Wallace for the study
Preparation
- Stayed at Kashmir Cottage in Dharamsala
- Had to obtain security clearance to meet Dalai Lama
- Proposed studying mental abilities and brain function of long-term meditators
Meeting with the Dalai Lama
- Felt nervous and anxious before meeting him
- Introduced ourselves and proposed study
- Found deep sense of security and ease during the meeting
- Dalai Lama was intrigued by the idea and grateful for their interest
Logistics
- Had to figure out how to transport equipment into hills
- Closest meditator was a ninety-minute walk from the nearest road.
Background:
- Group traveled to Dharamsala to study neurological effects of meditation
- Hired Sherpas to help carry equipment and backpacks filled with electronics and gear
- Trekked up mountain, encountered various challenges
Encounter with Rinpoche 1:
- Found monk living in retreat for ten years
- Wanted to explain goal and demonstrate experiments
- Asked about Stroop test, but Rinpoche 1 suggested practicing meditation instead
- Failed to obtain EEG data or interview
Encounter with Other Monks:
- Each encounter presented various challenges and reasons for refusal
- Humility a core value in Tibetan Buddhism, describing meditation seen as boastful
- Concerns about disruption of meditation practice
- Physical measurements deemed inadequate for understanding effects of meditation
- Fears of Western scientists due to negative experiences
Meeting with the Dalai Lama:
- Shared failure to collect data from monks
- Discussed reasons for refusal
- Dalai Lama suggested trying to work with long-term practitioners who are more familiar with Western thinking and technology
- Request: Focus on negative emotions in psychology research instead.
Additional Information:
- Monk's account of compassion meditation during captivity
- Previous attempts to measure mind deemed unimportant or disruptive
- Lack of success with monks in the hills
- Dalai Lama's suggestion for long-term practitioners who are more familiar with Western culture.
Background
- Scientist questioned why researchers didn't study virtuous qualities like kindness and compassion using modern neurobiology
- Most biomedical research in the West focused on treating diseases and emotional problems
- Term "compassion" not listed in major psychology textbook indexes in those days
- Researcher, a professor at University of Wisconsin, vowed to change this and be open about meditation practice
Challenges in Research
- Obtaining university permission for research on people is laborious and time-consuming
- Computer programming and pilot testing required extensive time
Historical Background: Matthieu Ricard's Involvement
- French man became a Tibetan Buddhist monk in 1967 after receiving Ph.D. in molecular biology
- Understood science and Western culture, yet an adept meditator
- First expert meditator to participate in scientific experiments on meditation
Brain Activity Measurement
- fMRI data are digital readouts with arbitrary colors
- Important to determine a proper baseline state
- Brain uses same machinery for visual imagery during meditation and perception
- Challenge was to find the optimal length for meditation periods and baselines
Meditation State Recognition
- Translation of Sanskrit word for meditation means "familiarize"
- Experienced practitioners can recognize meditative state like an oenophile recognizes a wine
Research Approach
- Short meditation periods alternating with short baseline periods to minimize taxing Matthieu's ability to remain still in MRI tube.
Preparation:
- Matthieu determined 2.5 minutes as ideal session length
- Baseline condition: lung ma bstan (neutral indifference)
- MRI software crash during initial testing
Meditation Conditions:
- Lung ma bstan: 3 minutes
- Compassion meditation: 2.5 minutes
- Open-presence meditation: 3 minutes
- Devotion meditation: 3 minutes
Analysis:
- Ordinary MRI analysis not rushed, but Dalai Laba visit necessitated quick results
- Graduate students and postdocs worked through the night to analyze Matthieu's data
Findings:
- Engaging in specific forms of meditation led to distinct changes in brain function
- First glimpse into a meditating brain: history being made.
The Dalai Lama's Visit:
- Arrangements for his visit were set quickly after the successful analysis
- Arrived with entourage, translators, and Secret Service protection.
- Dalai Lama's fascination with neuroscience: enthralled by machine shop, loved gadgets as a child
- MRI experiment:
- Student's finger movement: motor cortex lit up
- Thought of moving fingers: motor cortex less active but still visible
- Dalai Lama's curiosity: asked if no change in external stimuli, purely mental activity
- Discussion on meditation research
- Compassion: insula and motor cortex highly activated
- Focused attention: prefrontal and parietal cortices activated
- Open-presence: widespread activation of many brain regions
- Devotion: strong activation in visual cortex
- Dalai Lama's perspective
- Recognized potential for mental training to cultivate positive qualities and relieve suffering
- Understood need for scientific validation
Birth of Contemplative Neuroscience
- Hybrid field: combining Buddhist teachings and modern Western science
- Dalai Lama's hope: getting a more complete and unbiased picture of the human mind
- Crick's perspective on hybrid fields: new interdisciplinary areas often "astonishingly fertile".
Chapter 10: The Monk in the Machine
- Difficulties in researching long-term meditation practitioners
- Scarce cooperation from monks in Dharamsala
- People dedicating their lives to spirituality and mental training are not typical of humankind
- Few elect to spend large blocks of time in silent meditation
Observations on Researching Meditation Practitioners
-
Barriers to studying long-term practitioners:
- Difficulty in obtaining cooperation
- Unrepresentative sample of the population
-
Long-term meditators' unique characteristics:
- Dedicated their lives to spirituality and mental training
- Racked up thousands of hours of meditation practice
- Spend significant time in silent mental contemplation.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction:
- Secular form of meditation
- Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, University of Massachusetts Medical School
- Focus on nonjudgmental awareness of physical sensations and mental thoughts
- Sit quietly and focus on the present moment
- Observe thoughts and emotions without judgment
Study Design:
- Teach MBSR to some employees at Promega Corporation
- Place others in a waitlist control group
- Assess health and mental function of both groups before and after study
- Offer MBSR to those in the waitlist group once study was over
Importance of Control Group: To ensure that any changes observed were due to meditation practice, it's essential to have a control group that undergoes similar assessments but doesn't receive the intervention. This way, any differences between groups can be attributed to the MBSR practice itself.
Background:
- Jon Kabat-Zinn accepted position at UMass to develop stress reduction program in 1973
- Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT, wanted to share meditation practices with ordinary people
- Thrilled to participate in the study
Logistics:
- One 2.5 hour session per week for eight weeks
- Interviewed each participant before and after the course
- Commuted weekly from Amherst, MA to Madison, WI
- Participated in debriefing sessions
- Conducted baseline data collection:
- EEG measuring brain electrical activity (prefrontal cortex)
- Questionnaires assessing anxiety and stress levels
MBSR Training:
- Focus on breath awareness
- Mindfulness of body sensations
- Eating a raisin mindfully
- Mindful yoga poses
- Silent meditation during retreat
Study Design:
- Measured changes in Resilience (left-side frontal activation) and Outlook dimensions
- Control group received no intervention
- Flu shot given to all participants at end of study
Findings:
- Anxiety symptoms decreased 12% in MBSR group, increased slightly in control group
- Greater left-side frontal activation in MBSR group compared to control group (tripled after four months)
- Higher antibody production in response to flu vaccine for MBSR participants
- Larger brain response to MBSR associated with higher immune system response
Interpretation:
- MBSR shifts emotional style by altering neural pathways, reducing negative emotional responses to stress.
Background:
- Mindfulness meditation changes neural pathways in the brain
- Trains the brain to respond differently to experiences and thoughts
Effect on Anxiety:
- Redirects thoughts and feelings, reducing anxiety
- Creates new neural connections, strengthening resilience
Investigating Attention with Meditation:
- Hypothesis: Intense meditation practice enhances attention
- Study at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) retreat center
- Participants underwent three-month intensive meditation retreat
Attentional Blink:
- Phenomenon where attention is momentarily blocked after detecting an initial stimulus
- Prediction: Decreased attentional resources for first target may eliminate attentional blink
Study Findings:
- Control group showed no improvement in attentional blink
- Meditators showed a significant decrease in attentional blink (33% more second target detections)
- Brain activity: Less activation in attention region for first target predicted the detection of the second target.
Selective Attention:
- Capacity to focus on specific stimuli and ignore others
- Study aimed to test intentional selectivity in attention
- Participants instructed to attend to specific tones in each ear (high or low)
Results:
- On average, participants missed 20% of target tones
- Intentionally focusing on one type of stimulus was challenging.
Background:
- Participants with normal hearing
- Three months of meditation practice (retreatants)
- Control group did not improve
- Retreatants showed significant improvement:
- Correct responses increased to 91% from 80%
- Response time became more stable (variability decreased by 20%)
Brain Activity:
- Phase-locking: the degree of cortical oscillation synchronization to external stimuli
- Higher phase-locking = clearer response to stimulus and higher accuracy
- EEG study at retreat center showed increased phase-locking in retreatants during selective attention task
New Study:
- Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for 8 weeks
- Increase of alpha waves (cortical idling) in somatosensory cortex when focusing on foot
- Control group showed no such increase
- Brain reduces background chatter and focuses on selected information with mental training.
Future Studies:
- Difficulty recruiting long-term meditators
- Contacting adept meditators traveling to the US for visits to lab.
Implications:
- Short-term meditation practice can improve attention abilities.
- Future chapter will describe a step-by-step program for producing these changes.
- Mental training reduces background chatter and focuses brain on selected information.
Background:
- Researcher studied neural synchrony in eight Tibetan and Kagyupa monks with extensive meditation experience
- Interested in link between neural synchrony, attention, working memory, learning, and conscious perception
Procedure:
- Monks visited lab for EEG study
- Explained experimental protocol to ensure understanding
- Fitted with hairnet studded with 128 electrodes for electrical contact
- Baseline data collection: monk sat neutrally for sixty seconds at a time
- Switched to meditation: "unconditional compassion" meditation for twenty seconds
- Began EEG recording for sixty seconds, then asked monk to switch off meditation
- Repeated sequence three times for a total of four meditation blocks
- Control group recruited and given crash course in compassion meditation
- Compared gamma wave activity between monks and controls
Results:
- Monks showed significantly greater gamma activity during meditation than controls
- Gamma waves increased gradually as meditation went on, indicating neural synchronization development
- fMRI data showed enhanced activity in regions responsible for empathy, compassion, and planned movement in monks
- Monks' brains were "itching to go to the aid of those in distress" during compassion meditation
- Greater gamma activity and neural synchrony also observed in monks' baseline state
- Study suggests meditation might produce fundamental changes in brain function, enhancing learning and perception
Additional Findings:
- Monks with fewer hours of practice had more activation in attention networks than novices
- Monks with most hours of practice showed less activation in attention networks than controls
- Expert meditators maintained focus with less mental effort, achieving a "settled state" of alert focus
- Compassion meditation enhanced feelings of empathy and desire to act for the benefit of others
- Monks showed greater activity in brain regions associated with reading other people's emotional and mental states when not meditating.
Background
- Long-term meditation may alter the brain and enhance compassion
- Study in 2007 investigated short-term effects
Participants and Procedure
- Forty-one volunteers: meditation vs cognitive reappraisal group
- Both groups received instruction online for thirty minutes a day for two weeks
Compassion Meditation Technique
- Visualize loved one suffering
- Concentrate on wishing their suffering to end
- Notice physical sensations, particularly around the heart
- Feel compassion emotionally, not just cognitively
- Expand circle of compassion gradually
Cognitive Reappraisal Technique
- Visualize loved one's suffering
- Reframe beliefs about its causes and severity
- Attribute negative things to external circumstances
- Focus on the difference between internal and external factors
Brain Changes Predictions
- Decreased amygdala activation in response to suffering images
- Increased prefrontal cortex activation due to higher cognitive functions
Results
- Participants who underwent compassion meditation showed decreased amygdala activity in response to suffering images
- This decrease was not observed in the cognitive reappraisal group
Real-World Impact
- Participants in the compassion meditation group were more likely to be altruistic and give more money to others in an economic decision-making game
Key Findings
- Compassion meditation decreases personal distress, as reflected by decreased amygdala activation.
- It increases activation in regions associated with goal-directed behavior (prefrontal cortex).
- Enhances connectivity between prefrontal cortex, insula, and nucleus accumbens.
- People trained in compassion meditation develop a strong disposition to alleviate suffering and wish others to be happy.
- No systematic research on how different forms of meditation impact Sensitivity to Context style.
Styles and Techniques for Emotional Change (to be discussed in the final chapter)
- Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)
- Intensive period of mindfulness meditation
- Compassion meditation
- Techniques for changing where you fall on each dimension of Emotional Style.
Chapter 11: Rewired - Neurally Inspired Exercises to Change Your Emotional Style
Background and Personal Journey:
- Discovery of Emotional Style's importance in understanding the mind
- Unique blend of six dimensions: Resilience, Outlook, Social Intuition, Self-Awareness, Context, Attention
- Combination describes perception of world and reactions to it
- Author's personal conviction
Emotional Style Assessment:
- Six dimensions: Resilience, Outlook, Social Intuition, Self-Awareness, Context, Attention
- Each dimension impacts perception and reactions
Power to Shift Emotional Style:
- Long-term meditators studies
- Demonstrates ability to live and train brains for emotional style change
Dispelling "I'm okay, you're okay" Thoughts:
- Quickly dismissing this perspective with respect.
- Some Emotional Styles can make life more difficult (not arguing for middle of each dimension)
- Productive, creative individuals exist with various Emotional Styles
- Shift set point along dimensions for effectiveness in specific situations
- Limitations to range one can travel
Positive Outlook:
- Can spur hard work but can also lead to unwise decisions
- Extreme Positivity can result in impulsivity, neglect of threats
- Excessive optimism may cause difficulties in learning from mistakes
- Recent findings suggest link between high positive emotion and risky behaviors
- Importance of balance between Positive and Negative Outlook
Negative Outlook:
- Can sap motivation and damage relationships
- Extreme negativity can be debilitating
Self-Awareness:
- Understanding feelings and body signals important but not always necessary to be aware of all sensations
- Some extreme Self-Awareness can lead to annoying food phobias or other hypersensitivities
- Importance of balance between awareness and obliviousness
Changing Emotional Style:
- Change environment to accommodate Emotional Style or alter Emotional Style itself
- Shifting set point through mental training, focusing on specific neural circuits
Outlook (Positive/Negative):
- Excessive Positivity can lead to impulsivity, neglect of threats
- Excessive Negativity can sap motivation and damage relationships
- Can shift set point by strengthening prefrontal cortex planning function
- Resist immediate rewards for future rewards
- Seek out situations where immediate reward is tempting and resist it
Additional Information:
- Extreme Positivity can lead to inability to learn from mistakes, poor decision making
- Recent findings suggest link between high positive emotion and risky behaviors such as excessive alcohol consumption, binge eating, drug abuse
- Extreme Negativity can lead to giving up on relationships and life before trying.
Focus on Delayed Rewards:
- Visualize future rewards: college fund, house down payment
- Build up resistance to immediate gratification
- Practice daily for 15 minutes
- Allow occasional indulgences
Well-being Therapy:
- Enhances components of well-being: autonomy, mastery, relationships, growth, purpose, self-acceptance
- Strengthens prefrontal cortex and its connections to ventral striatum (implied)
Exercises:
- Write Positive Characteristics:
- Write down one positive trait of yourself and another of someone you interact with
- Repeat three times a day
- Express Gratitude:
- Express gratitude regularly
- Look directly into the eyes of the person being thanked
- Keep a journal to record specific instances
- Compliment Others:
- Compliment others regularly
- Note genuine connections in your journal
Reflection:
- Reflect on changes in Outlook style after completing exercises for one week.
Maintaining a Positive or Negative Outlook:
- To maintain optimal outlook zone: sustain exercise
- To shift toward Negative end: envision potential negative outcomes
- To change environment: fill space with reminders of positive or negative experiences accordingly.
Finding Like-minded People and Suitable Occupation:
- Seek people with similar Outlook to avoid discomfort
- Opt for jobs that are less demanding and have normal hours
- Consider occupations that reward negativity, e.g., security work, law enforcement, or poetry
Importance of Self-Awareness:
- Being Self-Aware helps identify important health signals
- Ultra-high levels can lead to panic disorder and emotional paralysis
Decreasing Insula Activity:
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy: reframe significance of internal cues
- Mindfulness meditation: observe thoughts, feelings, sensations nonjudgmentally
Reducing Reactivity to the Insula's Signals:
- Decrease amygdala and orbital frontal cortex activation
- Practice mindfulness meditation for observing thoughts without judgment
- Benefits include improved focus and reduced stress
Resources for Mindfulness Meditation:
- UMass Center for Mindfulness: www.umassmed.edu/content.aspx?id=41252
- Instructional CDs from Jon Kabat-Zinn or Sharon Salzberg
- Focus on breathing with eyes open or closed
- Sit upright with a straight spine
- Practicing for 5-10 minutes, twice daily
- Reengage with breathing to settle mind when lost in thought
Body Scan:
- Move attention systematically around body
- Experience sensations without thinking about them
- Cultivate nonjudgmental awareness
- Practice for 5-10 minutes, twice daily
Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation:
- Increases insula activity and Self-Awareness
- Transforms reactivity to internal signals
- Amplifies or regulates internal sensations
- Improves focus by increasing activity in prefrontal and parietal cortices
- Boosts Self-Awareness by decreasing distractions and increasing quiet environments
Signs of Too Much Focus:
- Family or colleagues complain about not being heard
- Missing the big picture or context
Signs of Being Unfocused:
- Distracted by external stimuli
- Inability to complete tasks
- Forgetting what was read or seen
Focused Attention Meditation (One-pointed Concentration):
- Find a small visual object to focus on
- Focus all attention on the object
- Calmly redirect attention back to the object if it wanders
- Practice daily, increasing time as ability improves
Open Monitoring Meditation:
- Cultivate awareness of awareness itself
- Observe thoughts and feelings without engaging with them or rejecting them
- Develop panoramic awareness
- Useful for broadening attention
Arranging Environment to Enhance Focus:
- Minimize distractions
- Clear work environment
- Practice doing one thing at a time
- Create an environment to help broaden attention (if hyperfocused)
- Keep computer room or office door open to hear outside world
- Have music playing in the background
- Position desk near window to easily glance outside and see distractions
- Place photos of loved ones nearby for inspiration
- Set alarm every 20-30 minutes as a break from concentration
Resilience: Slow to Recover
- Difficulty moving on after setbacks can prevent achievement and make relationships difficult
- Fewer or weaker signals traveling from prefrontal cortex to amygdala
- Patients with depression have weak connectivity there
- Can appear unfeeling or emotionally walled off to others
- Impairs ability to experience empathy
Benefits of Being Fast to Recover
- Allows for feeling and responding to own emotions
- Healthier emotional life
- Enhances ability to respond to other people's emotions
- Improves empathy and understanding
Building Resilience: Slow to Recover
- Focus on negative emotion or pain resulting from setbacks to sustain it
- Increase activation of amygdala by focusing on the pain of someone else's suffering
Boosting Resilience: Fast to Recover
- Increase activity in left prefrontal cortex
- Strengthen neuronal highways between prefrontal and amygdala
- Practice mindfulness meditation for emotional balance and faster recovery
- If mindfulness is not enough, consider cognitive reappraisal training.
Cognitive Reappraisal Training
- Challenges inaccurate thoughts about adversity
- Reframes causes of behavior to reduce distress
- Results in increased prefrontal inhibition of the amygdala
- Best conducted with a skilled cognitive therapist.
- Man is experiencing multiple sources of stress: ex-girlfriend's misuse of credit card, job in jeopardy due to Internet sting, and eviction threat from landlord
- Describes feeling overwhelming pain and suffering
Response:
Emotional Activation:
- Activation of anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and amygdala when focusing on another's suffering
- Engaging in Tonglen meditation practice to cultivate compassion:
- Visualizing someone suffering (friend, relative, colleague, or generic person)
- Taking in their suffering during inhalation
- Transforming it into compassion and sending it back during exhalation
Environment:
- Leaving the situation causing adversity for a less emotionally resonant environment to speed up recovery
- Remaining in the situation associated with adversity or placing reminders of it around you to slow down recovery
Social Intuition:
- Difference between Socially Intuitive and Puzzled individuals
- Socially Intuitive: high fusiform activation and low amygdala activity
- Puzzled: low fusiform activation and high amygdala activity
- Improving Social Intuition involves increasing fusiform activity and quieting amygdala activity
- Pay attention to social cues through practice (observing others in public)
- Cultivating Social Intuition through mindfulness meditation (paying attention to people's eyes and emotions)
- Training in micro-expressions may increase fusiform activation as well as temporal sulcus activity, potentially improving the ability to pick up social signals.
Improving Sensitivity to Social Cues:
- Enhance sensitivity to vocal cues:
- Close your eyes in public places
- Focus on the tone of voice
- Describe the emotion conveyed
- Enhance sensitivity to body language:
- Observe conversations and gestures
- Designate one channel as focus for a day
Being More or Less Social Intuitive:
- Puzzled end:
- Decrease social interactions
- Work from home
- High end:
- Limit social interactions to scheduled times
- Study in private
Sensitivity to Context:
- Distinguish between safe and dangerous contexts
- Gradually accustom yourself to anxiety-producing cues:
- Practice deep breathing exercises
- Progressively expose yourself to the triggers
- Research suggests exposure therapy as an effective method for enhancing Sensitivity to Context.
Identifying Anxiety Triggers:
- List specific cues and behaviors of anxiety source
- Looming presence during workday
- Looting outside workspace at specific times
- Criticizing reports or work
Exposure Therapy:
- Bring to mind images of the anxiety source
- Perform breathing exercise
- Repeat until comfortable and relaxed
- Expect benefits after four sessions
Improving Emotional Responses:
- Cultivate self-awareness through mindfulness practices
- Regulate emotional responses
- Minimize excessively contrived behavior
Accommodating Sensitivity to Context:
- Minimize number of contexts for those not very Tuned In
- Familiar social environment
- Travel with someone known
- Limit range of contexts for those highly Tuned In
- Reminders of core habits of mind
Mind Over Matter:
- Exercises change brain by transforming mind
- Based on millennia-old traditions or modern techniques
- Shift emotional style through introspection and awareness.
Changing Emotional Style:
- Consider if current emotional style hinders personal growth
- Flourish in well-being and help others do the same.
Mindfulness Practices:
- Regulate emotional responses
- Minimize context-dependent behavior
- Cultivate self-awareness to understand emotional challenges
- Emotions enhance appreciation for others and life.