Dr. Daniel G. Amen, the Brain Man seen regularly on PBS, is a Psychiatrist and well known brain disorder specialist, quotes Canadian Neuropsychologist Donald Hebb when he says “neurons that fire together, wire together”. This research was the basis of his own book Change your Brian, Change your Life.
We see this in many ways, but in principle it appears to be first suggested in the writings of Saint Paul when he explains that we should put our minds off of some things and onto others. In recent decades we have learned that in many depressives, for example, there is usually a pattern of thought they ruminate (dwell) on that leads to other relative thoughts that eventually spiral them down into the emotional pits of sadness and despair. There is no question that what we choose to dwell on mentally produces emotions. We have known this for years. When we dwell on say fearful thoughts certain areas of the brain can be seen to suddenly energize and become active. If a researcher watching this activity suddenly shows them images of their loved ones and encourages them to think on these people and some good times together, the brain chemistry us altered, the presence of norepinephrine and dopamine spike, different areas of the brain become energized (as can be demonstrated with MRI imaging), and the emotional mood that follows is also changed (itself engaging millions of biochemical subtleties).
At UCLA, the Center for Culture, Brain and Development us investigating “how cultural and social relations inform brain development, how the brain organizes such experiences and knowledge, and how such developments in turn give rise to a cultural brain.
They have discovered that “Our cultural practices such as emotional bonds to family or religious devotion are themselves repetitive patterns of energy use that stimulate (from the outside) discernable neural firing patterns and synaptic connections. Our brains become used to, and even develop a preference for, certain patterns, meaning the brain can be trained to behave, and even gradually evolve, based on the activities of the mind.”
One point that Dan Siegel, a professor of Clinical Psychiatry at UCLA medical school, argues is that “the mind can be shared with others, and that these inter-personal neural networks can in fact shape the brain. The brain and the mind obviously have an intimate relationship, but the mind is different: it is a collection of thoughts, patterns, perceptions, beliefs, memories and attitudes.” As Siegel explains, “The mind can use the brain to perceive itself, and the mind can be used to change the brain.”
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist, points out that "Negative stimuli produce more neural activity than do equally intense (e.g., loud, bright) positive ones”, Hanson notes “They are also perceived more easily and quickly. For example, people in studies can identify angry faces faster than happy ones; even if they are shown these images so quickly (just a tenth of a second or so) that they cannot have any conscious recognition of them, the ancient fight-or-flight limbic system of the brain will still get activated by the angry faces.”
It turns out that the more that an individual’s thoughts focus on the negative and spend rime allowing themselves to dwell on these thoughts the more likely it becomes to return automatically to these thought patterns.
According to Psychology Today the consensus among the Psychiatric community is that this is not good for our mental/emotional health because the amygdala and the thalamus cannot perceive the difference between real stress and imagined stress like we can realize in our minds if we are made aware of this process.
So picture if you will a person dwelling on the negative or painful for great lengths of time every day. Only those areas of the Brain being energized, only those emotional responses being felt and dealt with, become the “norm” for that individual. As adaptive biological creatures these patterns and connections in the Brain become reinforced as the individual’s reality. In contrast, a person who engages prayer and meditation, and/or chooses to dwell on more positive life affirming thoughts, energizes those areas of the Brain empowering those connections with their resultant emotional responses and all the biochemical reactions and connections that these entail. One is clearly not beneficial to the mind and body and even disrupts social ability while the other clearly benefits the mental/emotional well -being and enhances one’s ability to function socially. How Paul relates to this will be shared on the next post.