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December
The Brain in a Bucket Use your mind to change your
brain - and your life.
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Have you ever seen a real brain?
I remember the first time I saw one, in a
neuropsych class: the instructor put on rubber
gloves to protect against the formaldehyde
preservative, popped the lid off of a lab bucket,
and then pulled out a brain.
It didn’t look like much, a nondescript
waxy yellowish-white blob rather like a sculpted
head of cauliflower. But the whole class went
silent. We were looking at the real deal, ground
zero for consciousness, headquarters for
“me.” The person it came from – or,
in a remarkable sense, the person who came from it
– was of course dead. Would my brain, too, end
up in a lab bucket? That thought gave me a creepy
weird feeling completely unlike the feeling of
having my heart or hand in a bucket some day –
which gets right at the specialness of your
brain.
That blobby organ – just three pounds of
tofu-like tissue – is considered by scientists
to be the most complex object currently known in
the universe. It holds 100 billion neurons amidst
another trillion support cells. A typical neuron
makes about 5000 connections called synapses with
other neurons, producing a neural network with 500
trillion nodes in it. At any moment, each node is
active or not, creating a kind of 0 or 1 bit of
information. Neurons commonly fire five to fifty
times a second, so while you’ve been reading
this paragraph, literally quadrillions of bits of
information have circulated inside your head.
Your nervous system – with its control
center in the brain – moves information around
like your heart moves blood around. Broadly
defined, all that information is the mind, most of
which is forever unconscious. Apart from the
influence of hypothetical transcendental factors
– call them God, Spirit, the Ground, or by no
name at all – the mind is what the nervous
system does. So if you care at all about your mind
– including your emotions, sense of self,
pleasures and pains, memories, dreams, reflections
– (and who doesn’t?) then it makes tons
of sense to care about what’s going on inside
your own brain.
Until very recently, the brain was like the
weather: you could care about it all you wanted,
but you couldn’t do a thing about it. But new
brain imaging technologies like functional
MRI’s have revolutionized neuropsychology much
as the invention of the microscope transformed
biology. According to Dr. Alan Lesher, CEO of the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science, our knowledge of the brain has doubled in
the past twenty years.
These breakthroughs have informed – and
been informed by – practical applications in
psychotherapy. For example, trauma therapies have
been improved by research on memory, while the
results of interventions such as EMDR have
suggested new lines of investigation. Like other
therapists, I feel clearer about a client’s
mind because more is known about his or her
brain.
I’m also a meditator – started in
1974, at the tail end of college – so
it’s been inspiring to see something similar
happening with contemplative practice. Some of the
most interesting studies of brain function have
been done on long-term meditators, the Olympic
athletes of mental training. For example,
experienced meditators actually have thicker
cortical layers in the brain regions responsible
for self-awareness and the control of
attention.
This illustrates a fundamental point with
extraordinary potential: when your mind changes,
your brain changes, both temporarily – with
the momentary flicker of synaptic activity –
and in lasting ways through formation of new neural
structures. Therefore, you can use your mind to
change your brain to benefit your whole being
– and every other being whose life you
touch.
The new neuroscience, combined with the insights
of clinical psychology and contemplative practice,
gives you an historically unprecedented opportunity
to shift your brain – and thus your mind
– toward greater happiness, love, and
wisdom.
And that’s what this blog is about:
skillful means – from the intersection of
psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice
– for relieving distress and dysfunction,
increasing well-being, and deepening mindfulness
and inner peace.
We’ll focus on scientifically informed but
eminently practical tools, skills, and perspectives
– things you can use in the middle of daily
life: on the job, in traffic, raising kids, when
you’re nervous or mad, or working through a
sticky conversation with your mom or your mate. For
example, the next several entries in this blog will
look at the power of gratitude to undo the threat
reactivity of the brain, how to weave positive
experiences into your brain and your self, and the
three neural circuits of empathy.
And if you want to learn more, check out my free
e-newsletter, Just One Thing, which suggests a
simple practice each week that will bring you more
joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace
of mind and heart.
With just a little understanding of your own
brain, you can reach down inside the enchanted loom
of your very being and gradually weave greater
strength, insight, confidence, contentment, and
loving intimacy into the tapestry of your life.
That’s the great opportunity here: your brain
is not in a bucket, it’s alive and pulsing
with possibility, waiting for the skillful touch of
your mind to guide it in increasingly wonderful
directions.
I hope you’ll join me on this incredible
journey.
©2009, Rick
Hanson
* * *
There is no cure for birth and death
save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana
Rick Hanson,
Ph.D. is a neuropsychologist, author, and teacher
at the intersection of psychology, neurology, and
contemplative practice. He is the founder of the
Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and
Contemplative Wisdom, and author of
Buddha's
Brain: The practical neuroscience of
happiness, love
& wisdom. Just
One Thing suggests a simple practice each week that
will bring you more joy, more fulfilling
relationships, and more peace of mind and
heart.
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