Training the Mind Changes the Brain

Whenever we talk about positive interventions, we are assuming that people are malleable. William James wrote about intentional activity to change habits in ways that make life better. That’s the premise of books like The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky: that research has shown that people can make lasting changes in their level of happiness, but it requires action, effort and persistence.

That’s what psychologists have found. Neuroscientists are finding the same thing. Richard Davidson is a neuroscientist who uses brain imaging to study behavior and emotion. (See his site for a more technically correct description of what he does.) He claims, “Social and emotional learning changes the brain,” and “We can change the brain by training the mind.” Social and emotional learning is a process by which people become better at understanding and managing emotions and learn how emotions impact the choices they make, the relationships they have, and their outlook in life.

Dr Davidson has a 16-minute lecture online that is available at the Edutopia site. Here are some of his primary points:

• Behavioral interventions have biological impacts. They change the brain.

• Behavioral interventions can cause more specific brain changes than psychotropic medications. They can affect very specific circuits, which is beyond our ability with drugs.

• The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved in more than cognition. It is also very involved when we use positive emotion to guide decision-making. For example, when someone is getting motivated to pursue a goal, the PFC is involved.

• The prefrontal cortex is also connected to the amygdala – the part of the brain that detects threats and generates negative emotions. Scientists can visualize the connections between a person’s PFC and amygdala. They have reasons to believe that stronger connections enable better self-regulation. These connections can be built with intentional activity.

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  Pre-frontal Cortex & Amygdala

  Amygdala responses are important for avoiding threats, but not many of us are chased by tigers any more. The physical responses to negative emotion have been hijacked for situations that are much less threatening — e.g., attacks to our self-esteem. (This reminded me of Martin Seligman saying that we still have Pleistocene brains … )

• Scientists have shown greater prefrontal cortex activity in the brains of people who recover more rapidly from negative events. Presumably the PFC is actively reappraising a negative stimulus and coming up with a more adaptive and positive response. People can learn to do this with practice.

• This ability to regulate emotion is important not just to happiness but also to health. Adolescents with strong PFC activation in response to negative events tend to have lower levels of cortisol in the evenings. Higher cortisol takes a toll on many organs, including the brain.

• Neuroscientists have shown that anxiety impairs working memory. Therefore the ability to calm oneself is an important skill for learning.

He concluded that qualities such as patience, calmness, cooperation, and kindness are skills that can be trained, not traits that are either inborn or set for life by early childhood experiences. He also commented that he has not seen a sharp decline in this sort of neural plasticity as people get older. Training the brain may get somewhat more difficult as people age, requiring somewhat greater effort. Unlike learning language, there is no window that closes at a certain age.

Social and emotional learning is strongly related to Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence and involves 5 competencies that proponents believe should be core parts of education:

• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Self motivation
• Empathy
• Peer relations

This summary does not include any specific interventions for increasing these competencies. But I believe that just knowing that the brain can be changed is a positive intervention all by itself. I’ve been trying it out. Whenever I start feeling negative emotions — anger, shame, fear — I think about having an opportunity to train my brain, and somehow that helps me moderate my response.

When just learning a new skill like giving speeches, it’s very helpful to act as if one is confident without waiting until one actually feels confident. We sometimes call that “Fake it ’till you make it.” Building strong PFC-Amygdala circuits is similar. Acting as if they are already there — by intentionally working on self-regulation — helps bring them into existence.
 

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References

Davidson, R. (2008). The heart-brain connection: The neuroscience of social, emotional, and academic learning. Edutopia Video.

Davidson, R. (2012). The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live–and How You Can Change Them. Plume. (Added later)

Zins, J. E., Bloodworth, M. R., Weissberg, R. P., & Walberg, H. J. (2004). The scientific base linking social and emotional learning to school success. In Columbia University, Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning: What does the Research say? Chapter 1. See page 7 for a discussion of the SEL competencies.

Taylor, J. B. (2009). My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. Plume.

Thank you, Amanda Horne, for your PPND article that led me to Richard Davidson’s video lecture.