Category Archives: Brainz

Cultivating Creative Insights

Ellie Di of The Headologist asked if I’d write about cultivating creativity and how the brain is involved. As the posting schedule is shifting over at her blog, you can find the result below!

Creative thinking is a tricky thing to define. Some call it a skill; one that you either have or you don’t. Some say it requires inspiration, while others say it can be cultivated and “learnt”.

When I looked at creativity as a student, Einstein was viewed as a creative scientist, Leonardo da Vinci was seen to be a creative artist and composers like Mozart had their own version of creativity.

However, the definition is still hazy around the edges. Is creative art the same as creative science or even “innovative problem-solving“? Are engineers and mathematicians creative too? Maybe just some of them?


What might the difference be between the Mona Lisa and the Theory of Relativity? Would you call one more creative than the other?

Despite these differences, two common aspects of defining a creative thought are usefulness / purpose (aesthetic beauty counts) and novelty (hence it being creative or innovative, not just “normal”).

These ideas then follow four key processes:

~       Preparation – where we search for inspiration or gaze at the empty page

~       Incubation – letting the thoughts settle on the page or in our minds

~       Inspiration – finding their power, their wording, the context

~       Verification – trying them out, settling them into their new home


The Process

The scientific view of creativity and creative thinking seems to have a short-fall in the literature. However, the explanations of a movement practise called Shivanata, which provides creative thoughts, can give us a peek at the neuronal systems which support this event.

Essentially, our brain is a bunch of wires which connect all areas to nearly all the other areas. However, the wires are not all linked to each other directly; but via many connections (i.e. A-B-C-D connects A-D, but there are no wires from A to C or A to D directly).

In practices which utilise a mixture of skills, our brains can actually create these short-cuts and join areas which previously didn’t communicate at all, or only slowly (via fifteen little paths). This is where the “epiphanies” or new, creative ideas stem from: New or improved communication between parts of the brain that didn’t previous chat.


Connecting the Dots

Each time you act, neurons fire along the wires in your brain, and that path gets strengthened. For example, if you were to cross a field, you may find it slow-going. You trip over the molehills while falling down the surprise ditch and weave around the dog excrement and broken glass. It takes effort and time to watch out for danger and keep in line with your destination – a tiny gap in the fence at the other end which takes you onto the pavement.

After walking the route 5 days a week, for 2 years; the grass is flattened where you walk; the molehills are squashed down and you automatically hop over the ditch without even thinking. It takes you less time and energy to get across the field than it did before.

In your brain, there are little pulses of energy which travel down wires. In between two wires; there are ditches. If they use the same route enough; the neurotransmitter is increased; creating a bridge at the ditch so you save time; not even having to jump over it.


Want some creativity to flow your way?

1. Do things together

The best way to connect your brain is to learn new things; or do things differently. Mix these up with something you find easy or is automated to draw on an already-existent connection.

So for me, brushing my teeth is an automated process. I don’t have to think about how to hold the brush or which tooth to brush next; it just happens. So, I can change the hand I hold the brush with to start changing my neurons. My balance is mediocre, so maybe I’ll stand on one leg throughout brushing my teeth too.  If that’s not your thing, what about re-learning the second language you took in school? Stick up a list of Irish verbs on the wall; and read them while brushing your teeth. (I did this every day for a year… “Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat!” is a useful phrase.)


2. Mix it up

You want to mix the areas of the brain up; using a bit from each. So we have spatial, verbal, numerate, physical movement and visualisation/planning which all have their own areas.

This is why the above example uses movement (brushing teeth), spatial or balance (where my leg is in space), and verbal (second language learning), which will likely use visualisation if you visualise the action / object vividly.


3. Short but Strong

Do these mixed-up-items often, intensely, but for short bursts. And rest a lot between them. I brush my teeth 2 – 3 times a day, for 3 – 4 minutes each time.  That’s enough for a big change, and is more efficient (and less time-consuming) than spending two hours on one day each week doing it.


4. Keep changing it

Once it becomes habit, switch it up! Keep that brain learning new routes! Move onto algebra equations and tap-dance or hold one arm out while brushing your teeth. Or waiting for the kettle to boil. Put 100 new Italian nouns up to learn on the wall by your bed.


Your Thoughts

How do you find your creativity?
How would you define creativity and insights?
What insights would you like to have?

Interested in gaining some creative insights for yourself?
Head over to the Shivanata page to learn more.

– Rose –

 

As phoenix rises from ashes into flame, the alchemist turns lead to gold.

Are you feeling heavy, dull and in need of a smith? Let me help you to shine up and set you alight with your passion again.

The Alchemy Forge is open and fired up for business!

 

Relationships: The Body and The Mind

“Relationships are different for everyone.

Some are simple, others are complicated. Some are positive, loving and close, others are distance, negative or harmful.

There are so many ways to begin to love yourself; your personality and your body, your style or your heart.

However, what kind of relationship do you have with your mind?“

Today you can find me over at Medicinal Marzipan, talking about the relationship we have with our minds. Find the full post here and let me know how you and your mind get along.

“I looked everywhere for positive, rewarding ways to communicate with my mind, but found nothing worked as well as being negative.

Then I realised the core prompt was fear.“

Unintentional Brain Training

Over the past 3 weeks, my housemate has been preparing for the end of her two-year course. She filled in two application forms; writing paragraphs on 6 key skills, a personal statement, job duties and all about her placement experience. She then submitted them, got an interview and has now been offered a job (well done Emma!!).

Over these three weeks, I’ve been spending a few hours in her room most evenings, proof-reading her words, suggesting links and ideas and trying to support her as best I can.

And all the while, she would have the television on, muted.

 

The Pattern Emerged

As she typed up ideas, I found my gaze dragged back to the screen. I only watch specific television shows, and only do so for a few hours a week. Even having the screen on made it hard for me to concentrate on anything else. I even began trying to lip-read the 24-hour news channel, which has headlines as subtitles and is something I would never choose to watch.

 

When I was a bit younger, I used to think that this pointed to obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I don’t sit still very easily, I change songs half-way through a track, begin a novel and then start another, read 5 books at once… all the evidence, when stacked up, would suggest that given nothing to do but watch the television or watch my housemate type up our ideas I’m just being a normal human being, following a pattern of flittering.

 

The Deeper Model

However, I notice that people who watch television all the time find themselves tuning out of it, and that I, as a rare viewer, get fully engrossed. Even in the same 3 news headlines that have been circulating on mute for the past 2.5 hours.

It’s not me or some general tendencies. It’s my brain.

 

Throughout the past few years, my brain has only ever watched television as a whole-attention experience. I don’t read, write or draw with the television on. If it’s a movie I’ve seen before; that’s fine. But watching a documentary means I’m focused on that screen.

Being put in a room with only really a screen to occupy me (as she was typing a lot between our discussions), I found myself gazing at it. Even though it’s a subject I’d never watch out of choice.

 

Brain Training as an Art

The training of my mind to focus fully on television when it’s on was not deliberate. Nor did it quite have as positive effect as I may have expected. It means I don’t mindlessly watch television, but it means I can’t focus on other things if a TV is nearby.

However, the training side can be done for anything.

Do you want to associate walks with fun, or cigarettes with negativity (if trying to give up) or reading with interest?

 

Training Steps

The training I’ve done here is very simple: one day I began to only watch television when a certain program came on. And another day, I moved to a room where I didn’t have a TV and had to carefully plan which programs I download or buffer online.

 

In psychology this is known as classical conditioning, or Pavlovian conditioning. In neuroscience it’s called long-term potentiation. It’s the reason shivanata is such a profound practise.

“When cells fire together, they wire together.”

When you do something with focus, you become focused doing it. Or with joy, it becomes joyful. Same with annoyance.

You can pick how to train your brain, and learn from how your brain has been unintentionally trained up until now.

Take some time to see what you’ve conditioned your brain to feel, to do, to be during certain activities. How did it come to learn those associations?

How could it unlearn them?

 

– Rose –

 

Tuesday Titbit – Week 15: The Half-Way Point

It’s Week Five of the Ten-week Term. University is officially half over (being week 15 of 30 overall ).

This week, Sensory and Motor Functions covered Visual Perception; while in Neuroscience of Consciousness we were taught about the Neuronal Changes of Sense.

This weekend I also spent a few hours revising for my Neuroanatomy exam, and if you want some friendly resource, here are the two main places I’ve been using:

Neuroscience for Kids – http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/introb.html

Genes to Cognition – http://www.g2conline.org/, particularly the 3D brain option.

Anyway, here’s the week’s main lecture points:

-          3D glasses make one eye see one image and the other eye see a different image. Each image is polarised differently, and has the opposing polarisation on the selected eye’s glasses view.

-          The act of binocular fusion then merges these two images to give you a coherent image; much like your nose does block out a section of what you can see right now… the hidden bit from one eye is fused with the sight of the other.

-          There is a specific area of the brain that purely processes faces. This is relatively well-known.

-          However, did you know there’s also a dedicated brain area for processing Houses? I didn’t.

-          If you ever touch a mirror and your finger’s reflection is slightly displaced; it’s a half-silvered mirror and someone is watching you from the other side. I suggest dancing wildly if you find yourself in this situation.

-          If you paralyse your eyes, but you tell your eyes to move (look right for example), the world will shift (I assume to the left?).

-          Real scientists have paralysed there eyes temporarily to study this using drugs in eye-drop form, or plastering the muscles around the eyes.

-          Transgender people have interesting phantom limb experiences. Woman who identify as male sometimes experience phantom penises (peni?), and men who identify as female do not generally experience phantom penises despite straight males often doing so.

-          Neuroscientists like making ferrets blind and deaf. This saddens me.

-          Sensory Substitution Devices are my idea of Hell, particularly the vOICe system, which reminds me of an alien movie*. It makes a noise which turns each light or dark patch of colour (form a camera) into sound; using higher pitches and louder volumes form items higher up the picture (birds in the sky) and lighter colours. I believe the pitch or space between noises also changes with depth. It read from left-to right, and sounds/looks like this.

So this week we laughed at the amount of penis talk, felt sad for ferrets, cringed at the idea of paralysing our eyes and I hid behind my friend as the creepy noises got louder and screechier.

Have a good week.

– Rose –

* I recognise it’s an amazing system for those who can’t see; and despite costing 35,000$ currently, it may well be a useful venture in the future. For me though, I’d much prefer it to sound more like this.

Tuesday Tidbit – Week 13: Bwainz

Third Week of University.

Once more this is a “top ten” format, and summarises three lectures; as I was ill and missed my Sensory and Motor Function lecture. Our fMRI lecture also had nothing of any significant value to anyone, unless you want to know how to select participants in order to get published in Nature.

So here is one Visual Consciousness lecture and one Neuro-Anatomy lecture:

-          The white matter in your brain (connections between regions) decreases 10% every 10 years.

-          Your pre-frontal cortex (planning & reasoning) deteriorate faster.

-          It’s fairly accepted that as we age, we lose consciousness.

-          The working memory used to be thought to store 7 -/+ 2 items. It’s now thought we can hold 4 blocks of information. “Oh there’s a car driving, that dog’s looking angry, what shall I have for dinner, that flower’s pretty”

-          The spinal cord has the same layers protecting it as the brain has: dura mater, arachnoid layer, subarachnoid space and pia mater.

-          The neurotransmitter GABA turns part of the brain off. Glutamate turns bits on.

-          A neurotransmitter called Noradrenaline (Norepinephrine if you’re American) controls your fight/flight response, and is the main reason heroin withdrawal gives you fight/flight symptoms.

-          There are 12 types of cranial nerves; one of each type on each side of your head. Thus there are 24 cranial nerves, all of which are either sensory or motor.

-          There are two types of pain-information fibre: the A-delta fibre, which gives you sharp, strong pains, and the C fibre, which causes your dull aches.

-          Opiates stop this pain response at the spinal cord; stopping the fibres from going up to tell your brain that you’re in pain.

That’s this week’s key lecture notes. Next week my MRI lecture will still be difficult to get in, and my Anatomy lectures have finished; so it’ll be all about motion perception and implicit learning.

– Rose –

Tuesday Tidbit – Week 11: Ten Introductory Tidbits

Contrary to the original plan, the Tuesday Tidbit just isn’t formulating itself.. This is because I don’t feel I’ve been taught anything either useful, new or anything that I can physically put into 500 words and still make sense.

I can attempt to explain the proton spin of hydrogen atoms within the water of your body which is measured by fMRI machines; but not in 500 words. I could explain the levels of fibres that form the end of your brain and beginning of your skull; but it’s not quite as cool as learning about octopi’s “freak-outs” or vampires in fMRI scanners…

So, this may be a one-or-two-off, or a new format of the Tidbit, but here’s ten facts I’ve learnt this week in my introductory (first week of) lectures:

-          Rabbits have no fovea. This is the part of the eye which focuses. This led to the question of whether they can perceive still things/people.

-          There is a term called “Brain-bow” which involves altering genes with florescent tracers in mouse brains and leads to a mutil-coloured brain. Brain-bow-mice are on my list of things to paint.

-          There are 100 billion neurons in your brain, each with 2000 connections each. There are more glial support cells than neurons.

-          People in a vegetative state have sleep/wake cycles.

-          Measuring self-awareness in octopi is difficult and my lecturer is “working on a way to measure octopus ‘freak-out’ in his studies”.

-          There are two main arteries that feed the whole brain: the Vertebral artery, which feeds the back of the brain, and the Internal Carotid Artery, which splits to cover both the side and top.

-          fMRI’s can measure blood oxygenation, which indirectly suggests neuronal activity in that area

-          Vampires from Dianne Sylvan’s series, and The Vampire Diaries could have a T2 type of fMRI, while the Twilight vampires fMRI would be blank, due to a lack of oxygen differences within their blood.

-          If the eye really was designed by an intelligent being, they were a shit designer; because our eye is inside out! (with blood vessels and processing bits in FRONT of the light-measuring bits.

  • That’s why we have a blind-spot – some vessels and cells get in the way of our view and blocks our vision.

-          Just three types of colour cell (cone types) exist in our eyes; allowing us to perceive millions of different colours/shades. However, some birds, amphibians and reptiles have four types; suggesting they may have better colour vision than us.

So yes. These all came from my six lectures (two thurs, two fri, two thurs), and all were the information, to my knowledge is correct as of January 2012.

Example of the brain-bow mouse brain-stem. Picture found here. 

 

Do any of these spark your interest or surprise you? Would you like to know anything particular about fMRI processes or how our eyes/senses/movement perception works?

– Rose –

Brain Exercises for the New Year

As I write more about the four areas of interest on my general blog, I mentioned the ways I’m keeping everything in balance – with food and exercise changes for my physical body, and mental challenges for my brain (which it makes sense to share here).

The Aim

I want my brain to be as efficient and as developed as it can (considering I only have 1/3rd of the neurons I had when I was born – there is hope as this is now stable until I hit about 45 it seems. And even then, it’s a gradual loss in most cases), and this means exercising it often!

I’ve used my knowledge of plasticity, or neuronal chemical messengers and of how the drugs work to keep those levels constant in order to give my brain the best chance to use all of its capacity; in each area/lobe and thus to expand all my skills; from language and numeracy to balance and creativity.

The Exercises

Some simple tasks to get your brain in learning mode (good to do during a lunch break when you still have to go back to working and don’t want to fully switch off but need a rest from that type of work):

-          Mentally add up the price or calories or some number of products around supermarket/in your basket

-          Read a book a fortnight

-          Count to 8 and back down to 1 and back up 8 while doing some spatial task

-          Put both hands in the air in front of you. Using your index/pointer finger, draw a triangle with one hand and a square with the other. Move one side with both fingers at the same time.

  • Work out how many times you need to go round to get both fingers to the starting point again (1:1, 2:2 3:3 4:1 1:2 2:3 3:1 4:2 etc)
  • Now make one go clockwise and the other anti-clockwise  (this is basically shivanata’s principle).

-          Do the above, while reciting a famous literary poem or quote, or doing long division in your head.

-          Practise shivanata every 2-3 days – as both teacher and student positions

-          Colour code lecture/work/any notes

-          Make every 3 programmes you watch educational/informational (Horizon: Seeing Stars, The Story of Electricity, Beautiful Equations, The Great Barrier Reef)

-          Study Anything not part of your job (for me, druid lessons weekly (even if only one page a week))

-          Find an academic paper on something interesting (Go to google and type in “google scholar” – then type in your topic.)

-          General knowledge quiz shows are also good (mastermind or eggheads particularly due to the details)

-          Count the number of times “X word” comes up in a book or article. Choose any word. Or make a phrase  (A Red Car?)– find the words of that phrase in that order (so A on one line, Red on another page, Car next chapter”, and count that as one instance.

-          Explain something to a child. Anything. I gave a talk to learning disabled adults about subatomic particles (quarks make up protons which are in the nucleus of atoms).

-          Say everything in different voices/accents, or better yet, other languages.

Alongside meditation, enough sleep and healthy eating; my brain should be very good at multi-tasking and communicating.  To boot, my balance, numerical, linguistic and spatial abilities will also gain height.

However, there are plenty of other exercises which will help to link various brain areas together, such as to read/watch emotionally stimulating books/films, to write both by hand and typing (and typing on a phone keypad for extra connections!), and to use (your own versions if you’d like) sign-language symbols when making notes.

If you enjoyed these ideas and want to know more about how you can improve your brain and body connections, sign up for access to the library to find out how I’m getting on with these plans, and head over to the Alchemy Forge to access the extended mental health guide.

– Rose –

Tuesday Tidbit – Week 10 – Ode To The Brain

Today, I’m sharing a nice video about the mind and the brain. Thanks so much for supporting this series and the Tuesday Tidbit will return in January with the topics of Neuroscience of Consciousness, Basic Neuroanatomy and Sensory and Motor Functions of the Nervous System.

In case the video doesn’t show up, here’s the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB7jSFeVz1U

“Through the powerful words of scientists Carl Sagan, Robert Winston, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jill Bolte Taylor, Bill Nye, and Oliver Sacks, it covers different aspects the brain including its evolution, neuron networks, folding, and more.”

 

The mind, brain and body are phenomenal phenomena, and I hope to continue unravelling it here at The Phoenix Mind in the coming year.

 

- Rose -

Tuesday Titbit – Week 7: Memory and Amnesia

100-500 words of interesting science for use in pub quizzes and general knowledge relating to science. Today, I want to share this story about cases of people who suffer from a very particular form of memory loss, from my Cognitive Neuroscience lecture.

Evening! So, this week’s tidbit is a brief look at a particular memory issue known as Amnesia. Essentially, there are tow main types: Anterograde, which is the “what happened two seconds ago?” and Reterograde which covers what happened before the brain damage.

H.M. and Clive Wearing 

The case of Clive Wearing is available on youtube, though the most famous case of this phenomenon was that of a patient known as HM or H.M. who had surgery for epileptic seizures when he was 10 which caused his memory difficulties. Clive’s is the only case ever recorded to be worse than H.M’s, which came from a Herpes virus (the one that gives people cold sores) which attacked his brain.

If the embedded video fails to load, this link can be found here: http://youtu.be/wDNDRDJy-vo  

Clive’s ability to speak, walk and play the piano have led to revolutionary thought in neuroscience about how memory is either spread out across the brain; or how different forms of memory may reside in separate areas.

For example, H.M could learn new motor skills such as drawing tasks. Each day he’d say “I’ve never done this before” but he’d get better at it each new attempt.

What It Is

Anterograde Amnesia is specifically the inability to form new memories; although most brain damage leading to memory malfunction does loss some of the recent memories from before the damage too.

Memories are formed via a process called “plasticity”. As you encounter a piece of information, a little wire in the relevant part of the brain (e.g. for learning words, the left temporal lobe) is created for that learning. If it is rehearsed enough; that wire of information grows, becomes bigger and begins to connect to other wires. In terms of memory, which is thought to be around the medial temporal lobe, it takes a lot of rehearsals before it becomes a part of the wire; thus anything not fully committed to the long term hardware is lost during damage.

An Interesting Case

One of the latest cases to move neuroscience forward in terms of memory is the case of Jon Forbes (Baddeley et al, 2001), who had a brain injury as a baby, therefore has no “before the event” memories to fall back on. He has learnt to speak and walk, yet fails to remember where things are or learn facts. His story is mentioned on Brain Story, and there are two videos below which talk about him:

Video One: Brain Story 5, Part 3, begins Jon’s story at 7:05 minutes in (until the end of the video), then picking up with Video Two: Brain Story 5, Part 4 until 5:10 minutes in.

First Part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiUEeb0pFHw – 7:05 – end.

 

Second Part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fioorZlgKg – beginning –  5:10


 

Scientists are still trying to figure out how the brain stores memories, and thanks to cases like these, we’re learning more every day.

– Rose –

 

Reference:

Baddeley, A., Vargha-Khadem, F. and Mishkin, M. (2001). Preserved Recognition in a Case of Developmental Amnesia: Implications for the  Acquisition of Semantic Memory? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13, 357–369.