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Transitions Week 2
The Course is exploration of the mind and
the brain as related to your transition to life
as a full time student
It is an introduction to which brain states
underlie confidence as a student, more
focus, attention, less stress etc
Recap
So we will look at how you can use your
mind to stimulate your brain to strengthen
these brain states.
It has a number of elements starting with
greater self-reflection and self-awareness,
then on to attention, self-talk, focus…
Recap
Change is a
shift in the external situation
Transition is the
psychological reorientation – working with
the mind in response to change
Change vs. Transition
Personality &
current state
of person
Coping styles
and strategies
(including appraisal)
Control:
unpredictable events;
ambiguous tasks
Social
Support
Moderators: Factors that
influence impact of a
“stressor”
Personality &
current state
of person
A new chapter in the life story:
Two questions for Weeks 1 and 2 :
What has led up to this moment
How has it formed your mind – your normal style
in dealing with challenges, new directions…
We are going to start with
the person
Personality &
current state
of person
First Key Guiding Principle:
The Mind uses the brain to create itself
Plasticity: The ability of the brain to continually
change during our lifetime as a result of experience.
The mind (our attitudes )
etc are rooted in our
brain
Personality &
current state
of person
Donald Hebb: “When neurons FIRE t0gether, they
WIRE together
= mental activity creates new brain structures.
Personality &
current state
of person
So even fleeting experiences , even in this past
week, can leave lasting marks on your brain
We saw this in the video of the baby , the Still Face
Experiment
A baby can't develop an orbitofrontal cortex on his
or her own.
Personality &
current state
of person
We saw this in the case of
Genie, a little girl kept in
one room by her parents
for the first 13 years of her
life and other children
who are suffered
privation:
Smaller brain size
It affects the structure of
the brain
The early years of life
matter because early
experiences affect the
architecture of the
maturing brain.
As it emerges, the quality
of that architecture
establishes a foundation
for all of the
development and
behaviour that follows
Brain structure
My cat lounges on the chair
after breakfast, stretching
himself to his full extent with
evident pleasure.
But if a dog should come past,
the cat would defend his own
'being' : run away and hide, or,
if cornered, would hiss and
snarl with his fur up to frighten
off the dog.
Our three brains
Or if he gets hungry and needs more energy
supplies, he would make sure to keep his 'being'
going by pursuing a mouse or vole.
He may not have self-consciousness or verbal
communication, but he has a range of basic feelings
and reactions which prompt his behaviour and
ensure his survival.
Our three brains
This is where human beings start too. We share with
other mammals a core brain which ensures survival.
A baby has a basic version of these systems in place: a
functioning nervous system which enables it to breathe,
a visual system which allows it to track the movements
around him, a core consciousness based in the
brainstem which reacts to sensory experiences and
assesses them in terms of survival.
Our three brains
Jill Boite Taylor
The 'oldest' structures in
evolutionary terms, such
as the brainstem and
sensorimotor cortex, are
the parts of the brain
which are most active in
the newborn.
So defense, pulling away,
creating separateness – is
one basic strategy of the
brain
Our three brains
When you are awake and not doing anything in particular,
the baseline resting state of your brain has a default running
speed and one of its functions is to track the environment
for possible threats.
This basic awareness is often accompanied by a
background feeling of anxiety that keep you vigilent.
Our three brains
Have a guess
Which are detected quicker: Fearful faces or happy
faces
Why?
Fearful faces
Even register sub consciously (Jiang and He, 2006)
The Brain is drawn to bad news
Negative stuff is stored stronger, faster, deeper
It is easy to get down from a few failures
But hard to undo those feelings, even with many successes
(Seligman 2006)
In relationships takes about 5 positive interactions to
overcome the effect of one negative one (Gottman 1995)
Our three brains
These settle down into emotions:
Emotions are first and foremost our guides to action:
They are about going towards things or going away
from them.
Not surprising that the fear and self-defence system based in
the amygdala is one of the first parts of the emotional brain to
mature.
Our three brains
Not surprising that
the fear and selfdefence system
based in the
amygdala is one of
the first parts of the
emotional brain to
mature.
Our three brains
As the emotional brain developed, and we became more
emotionally complex and sophisticated, more alternatives
and choices arose in our interactions with others.
This then required a capacity to think and reflect on our
emotions, and thus led to the development of the cortex, and
in particular, the prefrontal cortex.
Our three brains
This most recent
part is the thinking,
planning part that
chatters away all
day.
Our three brains
The orbitofrontal cortex plays a
key role in emotional life.
Through studying what happens
when this part of the brain is
damaged, neuroscientists have put
together a picture of its functions.
People with brain damage that
affects the orbitofrontal area can't
relate to others sensitively.
Our three brains
Our three brains
The brain grows in size and complexity in response
to the quantity and quality of the experiences its
owner is subjected to throughout their lives,
particularly in their youth.
The Brain changes
Neurons are the basic
blocks of everyday
experience
Release chemincals like
seratonn and dopamine.
Repeated Patterns of
activity in the neurons in
the brain become like
structures
The Brain changes
When you are on Facebook and get a mail,
dopamine is released in the brain.
Dopamine is connected to mood, motivation
feel-good
It gets released by pleasurable activities,
including video game playing, or surfing.
Ist the brain reward circuit that is released
when some parts of the brain are stimulated
A simple example
But dopamine also plays a major role in the
cycle of addiction: becomes a habit or
strengthens that part of the brain
It keeps the brain switched on
Interactive gadgets can trick the brain into a
persistent sense of emergency by setting off
scanning for danger system in the brain
A simple example
The most frequent and
repetitive experiences start
to form well-trodden
pathways, whilst those
connections that lie unused
begin to be pruned away.
This is the working shape
of the brain.
The Brain changes
Personality &
current state
of person
Two critical periods:
Childhood forms
Changes as we make choices in adulthood
We are looking at what formed us, to get to know them
Why? Because only a small fraction of the inputs that are
working in the brain come directly from the external world.
The rest come from internal memory stores and
perceptual processing modules
You brain is continually creating the world, partly on the
basis of experiences to date.
The brain is an 'anticipation machine' (Siegel 1999). It is designed to
help us navigate our way, providing expectations of likely outcomes
and holding knowledge of our environment.
Based on the images we form of a prototype episode: for example,
how the other person's face looked, how I feel in my body when they
do that thing.
2: Written Assignment : Present in class next week:
The Story of my Life 2: a LifeStory Interview
3: Reading: BrainRules Chapter 2 and 3
Assignments