How work and hobbies change the structure of the brain

[Teacher]

People are always arguing about what determines our thoughts and behavior more - innate abilities and characteristics or life experience and environment. Research by neuroscientists who study the brains of monks, chess players, gamers and other well-defined social groups is helping to get closer to the answer.

Alex Honnold can climb a sheer cliff several hundred or even thousands of meters high, alone and without insurance. Sweaty palms, dizziness, heart pounding in his ears - all this seems to be unfamiliar to him. Tests show that Honnold is completely devoid of a sense of fear: he was placed in a tomograph and shown scary photographs, and in response his tonsils - the areas of the brain responsible for the formation of both positive and negative emotions - remained stoic calm.

In other people, even in other extreme athletes, similar tests ignite a whole fire on the MRI scans of the tonsils, but this was not the case with Honnold. In this he is similar to people suffering from a rare Urbach disease - Vite, but only together with the fearlessness associated with non-working tonsils, he did not receive side effects such as a complete violation of the sense of personal space.

Honnold's case is unique and a gift for neuroscience. His fearlessness helps to better understand how our consciousness generates different feelings and how much they are intertwined with each other. In the same way, the case of Phineas Gage, whose head was pierced through and through with scrap metal, at one time showed scientists that organic brain damage can change a person's personality beyond recognition.

The study of the identified social groups is the opposite of the bright-case approach, and ideally they should complement each other. The cases of Honnold and Gage show us breakthrough points, places where the modern scientific paradigm sags, and systematic studies of the brains of representatives of clear social groups expand this paradigm, add details to the accepted picture of the world and help understand individual phenomena.

Harbingers of Alzheimer's and the Nature of Programming Languages: The Brains of Nuns and Coders

In 1986, scientists at the University of Minnesota began a long-term study of Catholic nuns in which they wanted to find reliable causes of Alzheimer's disease. All nuns lead a very similar life, do not use drugs, are not addicted to alcohol, and therefore are ideal for such a study, in which it is necessary to strictly distinguish the impact on health of lifestyle and heredity.

This work continues to this day, and 678 nuns have already taken part in it. She showed that the development of Alzheimer's can be predicted with high reliability long before old age. Before the tonsure (average age 22), each woman wrote an autobiographical essay, the linguistic complexity of which, it turned out, indicated the likelihood of developing the disease. 80% of nuns, whose texts did not indulge in complex syntax and various grammatical constructions, suffered from Alzheimer's disease in old age, while among the authors of more intricate texts, only 10% fell ill.

Scientists from Germany and the United States solved completely different problems in their research, who wanted to understand how similar programming languages are to ordinary, natural languages. To do this, they recruited 17 subjects and scanned the activity of their brain in a tomograph while performing simple tasks: people had to read a short program written in Java and predict the result of its work (all subjects knew the basics of programming).

It turned out that such tasks activate the work of several parts of the brain, normally responsible for memory, attention and language abilities. At the same time, the structures associated with mathematical calculations and logic remain almost completely at rest. It turns out that coding is closer to speaking in a foreign language than to solving mathematical problems - of course, with the bold proviso that reading the simplest programs in a few tens of lines can plausibly simulate the writing of real programs for thousands and thousands of lines.

How life changes our thinking: taxi drivers, musicians and chess players

Sebastian Seung, a professor at MIT and a neuroscience specialist, compares our neural activity to water, which directs the course of a stream - the structure of the brain and the intricacies of neural connections in it. The natural features of the structure of the nervous system, on the one hand, determine our thoughts and feelings, and on the other, they are constantly changing under the influence of the same thoughts, like water washing away the banks and making a new channel for itself. Many studies support this Seung's idea: our experience and our life can indeed change the structure of the brain.

Every licensed taxi driver in London must pass a difficult test - learn the names and features of about 25 thousand London streets and memorize all the sights on them, so that later on the exam, in writing and in maximum detail, plan any route around the city.

As shown in a 2000 study, such training not only makes maps or navigators unnecessary, but also greatly increases the volume of the back of the hippocampus - the area of the brain associated with orientation in space. Hard work and long wanderings through London streets seem to sharpen the brain for an ideal sense of space. At the same time, the volume of the rear part of the hippocampus increases in taxi drivers the more, the more time they spent behind the wheel.

There is a similar story for stringed musicians. German scientists have shown that the longer they play music, the more, in comparison with ordinary people, the volume of the cerebral cortex, which regulates the movements of the fingers, increases.

However, this logic - the more the better - does not always work. Another study, conducted by Swiss scientists on 20 professional chess players and 20 amateur chess players, showed that vocational training sometimes may not increase, but, on the contrary, decrease the volume of certain areas, which in the first approximation (but only in the first) even looks like a characteristic picture with porn addiction or alcoholism.

Playing chess, according to these data, leads to a decrease in the volume of gray matter in the area of the junction of the temporal and occipital lobes of the brain, a decrease in the volume of the caudate nucleus (responsible for making decisions ) and a decrease in the branching of the upper longitudinal bundle (transmits information from visual zones to executive ones). Experienced chess players seem to balance their brain and teach it to effectively cope with complex intellectual tasks with few resources (and do not kill it, as people with addiction do). In the same way, Neymar, one of the best modern footballers, has excellent ball control, showing significantly less brain activity than other footballers.

Inborn traits: phoneticians and gamers

Many may interpret the findings of a study with chess players in a completely different way. Perhaps from birth there are a number of people with a harmoniously organized, balanced, chess mindset, and only they can become real grandmasters over time - for the rest, chess will remain at the level of a hobby. Such logic leads us to exactly the same data as logic with a channel changing under the influence of a rapid water flow, and therefore long-term long-term studies are almost always needed to understand the true nature of the changes observed in the brain.

Scientists who have studied the brains of computer game fans have encountered similar explanations for the data. Their 2011 study involved 154 adolescents who were divided into two groups: those who played computer games often (more than nine hours a week) and those who played rarely (less than nine hours). As a result, it turned out that active gamers had a significantly increased volume of pleasure centers concentrated in the ventral part of the striatum and secreting various substances that fill us with happiness and pleasure in response to food, communication, sex and other pleasant actions.

Similar deviations are observed in schizophrenics or people with different types of addictions, but all the subjects, according to scientists, from the point of view of psychiatry, have not yet become addicted to video games. Again, this coincidence can be interpreted in two ways: either computer games can gradually lead to addiction, or there are people by nature who tend to seek easy, guaranteed pleasures, one of which can be video games.

Much more unambiguous are the results of the neuroscientist Narli Golestani, who studied the work of the brain of phoneticists - people who analyze the sounds of various languages, many of which they sometimes do not even know how to speak. She showed that the auditory cortex of phoneticians has a more complex structure than that of ordinary people - it has more digital convolutions filled with white matter. At the same time, it is reliably known that these features cannot arise and develop after the birth of a person. It turns out that you can only be born a phonetician, but what to do with taxi drivers, musicians, chess players and other highly specialized professions is still unclear. While science does not forbid anyone to try their hand at each of them and hope for success.

 

[Tomcat]

How the brain suppresses our ideas and how to prevent it​

We share with you the story of Courtney Seiter. First of all, this post will be useful for people who write: journalists, copywriters, etc. However, it will also be of interest to anyone who has a creative hobby.

I have a lot of ideas in my head. And for the most part, that's where they stay.

In my mind. Where other people cannot see them, cannot get to know them and cannot somehow influence them. Where they are safe. Where no one can criticize them. I created something. Of course, some may say that I have done a great job. But that's only because they don't know what I didn't. For example, this post was in my head for a month: I thought about it, waited and found fault with all the little things.

The most dangerous, most disruptive ideas are the easiest to bury in your head. But it's not right. They need to be held, fixed, like exhibits in a museum. They should be everywhere: in all your gadgets, in notebooks, and just in pieces of paper that are always scattered on your desktop. And while I was feeling creative, reveling in my ideas, they were dying a lonely death because I didn't do anything with them. They didn't have a chance to bring something new to the world. Influence someone. Light someone.

I was losing. I didn't force myself to dig deeper or complicate my task. I lost a lot: I had no feedback, I did not hear criticism. I missed this chance - to discover something new for myself, perhaps even to discover something new in myself.

I stopped before I could start

It was not the best life I could give my ideas and myself. So I decided to change everything. I decided to get rid of everything that prevents me from realizing my own ideas. I have compiled for myself a list of the most common things that interfere with the implementation of my ideas. And today I want to share it with you.

Feeling incomplete

The most important thing that keeps us from immediately putting our idea into practice is the feeling that something else is missing. It is not entirely clear how to implement this idea, or we need some examples. A former editor of mine called this “glimpses,” the spark of an idea when you feel like you're on the cusp of something important. Sometimes you need time to form a full-fledged idea out of this glimpse, and sometimes you need to combine several similar glimpses into one idea.

The main thing is that glimpses like these need your help. At the stage of their development, ideas seem so helpless and incomplete that it can be quite difficult for us to convey them to other people. What if your idea is misunderstood or completely hopeless? How to fix it: This may seem counterintuitive, but this rudimentary state of the idea is just the right thing. Now is the time to test your idea. For example, write a post about her on social media. And if there is criticism, then this is not scary, on the contrary, it will help you find weak points or let go of this idea, if you feel that it is hopeless, and turn in a different direction.

Because it's so hard

Although I have been writing for most of my life, it has never come easily to me. Sometimes the necessary words seem to be found by themselves, but more often the necessary thoughts have to be literally forced out. Sometimes I don't want this fight at all. Sometimes I just want to lie there and watch the show.

I hate writing. I love it when everything is already written.

Dorothy Parker

How to deal with it: The best solution is to just start. It doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter where, the main thing is just start. After I write down the headline, some kind of outline, or even just the first phrase, the process becomes easier. You can also do this: set yourself a goal - devote 20 minutes exclusively to the text and nothing else. As a rule, this concentration plays into your hands, and the creative process will begin to flow much faster.

Because we spend too much time on other people's ideas

I've always loved reading. And now I continue to read a lot, the e-book helps me with this. I also read Twitter, RSS feeds and print newspapers.

When I read good material, it makes me happy .

But if I am careless, the resulting material can shackle me: it will seem to me that all the ideas have been known for a long time, and all the good things that could be written have already been written. It's like impostor syndrome.

How the brain suppresses our ideas and how to prevent it

How to deal with it: We should always read and become familiar with the outstanding work of others. But we also have to create our own, even if sometimes even on the basis of what was created by someone else. Each of us should be responsible and should try to find the optimal balance between our own and others' creativity. Let it inspire you, not make you feel mediocre. In the end, everything is a remix.

Because we're too busy doing other things

Right now, as I type this phrase, I realize what a pitiful excuse this really is. Undoubtedly, like any other person, you have a lot of things to do at work and at home. But we will always find time in one way or another for an important matter for us. We can wake up early or go to bed later. We can turn off the TV and stop wasting our time. We all have the same number of hours in a day, and it is only in our power to distribute them correctly - so that we can do things that will help us achieve our goals.

How to deal with this: I first check my to-do list and figure out when I can write. Isn't this task in the category of the lowest priority? Very often, the schedule is so tight that everyday activities and work issues literally block the creative process. I can write on weekends or in the mornings before I check my email.

If it turns out that I'm actually too busy to bring my idea to life, then it's okay if I give it to someone else. In the end, sometimes you should think not only about yourself, but also about an idea that can disappear just like that.

Because we are distracted

From the moment I decided to write this article until the moment I actually wrote it, the following happened: I walked the dog, had breakfast, thought about what kind of new carpet to buy for me, checked Twitter and read two articles ... And this is not some antiproductive day where my focus is at zero - this is my normal day. We will always be distracted. This is a constant of the world in which we live. How to deal with this: I experimented with a lot of ideas and eventually came to the conclusion that a person needs deadlines (set by someone or set by himself), then he will be much more focused on the matter.

I'm also trying to understand the difference between productive distraction (an example is walking the dog - this action often leads to new ideas and thoughts) and involuntary distraction (constant, often very unnecessary and counterproductive monitoring of Twitter and Facebook).

Because we are afraid

Finally, we come to a big and important problem, which is often the basis for all others. The biggest reason my ideas live only in my head and not in the outside world is because I'm afraid. I'm afraid they are not good enough. I'm afraid they are not new at all. I'm afraid they are not unique. Oddly enough, many people find it easier to completely abandon an idea, to bury it forever, than to accept the fact that an idea may fail and not bring the desired result.

Think for a minute: if we approached every business in life with a similar attitude, we would never start anything and we would simply miss out on how much. Risk is exactly what makes our life interesting. Fortunately, in our time, it is not necessary to implement your idea exclusively on your own - you can work in a team. Teamwork is a great way to constantly get feedback, get a look at your idea through someone else's eyes, and get other people's opinions. If you don't have the opportunity to work in a team, then just try to find someone competent in the field to whom you can turn for advice.

How to deal with it: Of course, it is very difficult to derive a ready-made algorithm, but I am trying, and this post is one of those attempts. Here are the rules I have managed to deduce so far:

Don't occupy any one creative niche, be creative in general. My house now, for example, is littered with scribbled sheets of paper, although I do not draw well. But it normal. Set yourself a goal - to spend as much time as possible on creativity, even if everything does not immediately go the way you want it.

Share your creativity with others. I would never have clicked the Publish button before. And now you are reading this post. Show your creativity to people, start by asking family members to rate your work, and then things will go a lot easier.
Have time for pure thought. When your head is free from business and worries. These are the moments when the best ideas come to us. Walk the dog, ride your bike, just wander alone. Allow yourself to ask others for help. There is nothing shameful in this, but I, like most people, took a very long time towards this. When you are open to others, you constantly receive feedback and can improve your skills.

Of course, the comfort zone is a wonderful place, but if you really want to create something exciting, you need to get out of this zone more often. How the brain suppresses our ideas and how to prevent it.