The Owner's Manual for the Brain (4th Edition)

The Ultimate Guide to Peak Mental Performance at All Ages

Pierce Howard

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780062227355
• eBook ISBN: 9780062227362
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

P a r t O n e

Forming a
Foundation

The Context
for Using
Your
Owner’s
Manual

Part One. Forming a Foundation

The Context for Using Your Owner’s Manual

1. Getting Started

A Framework for Exploring Mind-Brain Concepts

2. Brain Basics

A Refresher Course in Hardware and Hormones

3. The Trouble with Drugs

Of Crutches and Cures

1

Getting Started

“Few minds wear out; more rust out.” —Christian Nestell Bovee

A Framework for Exploring Mind-Brain Concepts

World War II started something. The pain and tragedy of head injuries catapulted brain research into the foreground of scientific and pseudoscientific investigation. From the popular claims of split-brain research to the profound findings of neurotransmitter studies, discoveries by increasing numbers of researchers and readers have focused on learning how the brain works.

This explosion of research has given birth to a new field of knowledge: cognitive science, also known as brain science. One feature that makes this field unique is its interdisciplinary nature—it is made up of more than one traditional field of study. The research has been conducted by investigators from seven broad fields, although some subdivisions of these fields are more germane to cognitive science than others; for example, psychopharmacology is more germane than social psychology. The fields are

1. Biology

2. Chemistry

3. Psychology

4. Information science

5. Philosophy

6. Anthropology

7. Linguistics

Prior to World War II, communication among scholars in these fields was minimal. But the momentum increased noticeably soon after the war ended. Most people seem to date the beginning of cognitive science as a formal interdisciplinary field of study from September 1948 (Gardner, 1985), when scientists assembled at the Hixon Symposium, titled “Cerebral Mechanisms of Behavior,” at the California Institute of Technology. Presenters included John von Neumann and Karl Lashley, representing mathematics and psychology. Many regard this meeting as the death knell for the behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Edward Lee Thorndike, and John B. Watson, which had held sway until then. No more would strict stimulus-response explanations of human behavior be ascendant. With the rise of cognitive science came the doctrine that human behavior consisted of more than conditioned responses, that the human mind was indeed able to create, to choose, to reflect—in short, to explore the universe between stimulus and response. Stephen Covey (1990, p. 69) suggests that between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. Or, as Richard Restak (1991, p. 50) observes, we are moving from Socrates’s “know thyself” to Kierkegaard’s “choose thyself.” In a recent resounding affirmation of Kierkegaard’s dictum, filmmakers have given us the award-winning What the Bleep Do We Know?—an intense plea for self-determination of the world’s citizens (check their website at www.whatthebleep.com for study groups and so forth).

Emerging from over 30 years in the relative obscurity of academia, cognitive science had its coming-out with the publication in 1982 of Morton Hunt’s The Universe Within: A New Science Explores the Human Mind. His highly readable volume introduced many to this new field. Drawing from examples in areas such as problem solving, creativity, decision science, epistemology, moral development, personality theory, artificial intelligence, logic, linguistics, learning theory, and memory, he showed how cognitive science has brought previously isolated fields together into one common alliance committed to describing how the mind works. He related how this alliance of scholars is collaborating to describe the mind’s functioning from both the detailed, microscopic, bottom-up perspective, as in cellular neurobiology, and the big-picture, global, top-down perspective, as in discussions of primary personality traits. The excitement of this multipronged scientific movement lies in the moment when the bottom-up, or molecular, studies become recognized as equivalent to the top-down, or molar, studies.

An example of such a “meeting at the middle” can be found in Hans Eysenck’s The Biological Basis of Personality (1967), in which he begins to establish the relationship between the reticular activating system (RAS) in the brain (a molecular structure) and the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism (molar behaviors). Paul MacLean (1990) describes the bottom-up perspective as “objective” and the top-down approach as “subjective.” For an excellent and timely discussion of this molecular-molar relationship, see Cacioppo and Berntson (1992).

The Mind-Brain Dichotomy

As we slip into the content proper of this book, you will notice that the terms brain and mind are used interchangeably. IBMer E. Baird Smith has a comedy routine in which he asks, “Is your mind a part of your brain, or is your brain all in your mind?” In the 19^th century, English scholar Thomas Hewitt Key played with this semantic difficulty by asking, “What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.” This semantic puzzle needs attention! Dealing with the historical debate between mind and brain is beyond the purpose of this book. Understandable treatments are available in Gardner (1985) and Hunt (1982). In the seventeenth century, René Descartes argued for dualism, with “mind” a kind of software and “brain” a kind of hardware; he apparently developed this idea as a result of a rift with the church authorities, who allowed him to continue his work so long as he stuck to the body and let the church take care of the mind and spirit. Later, behaviorists like Skinner argued for monism (nothing exists other than cells), whereas current thinking argues for an interactionist approach, which describes the intimate, sensitive way in which mind (ideas and images) and body (cells, chemicals, and electricity) directly and immediately influence each other. As a simple example, we know that a joyful disposition (mind and spirit) can increase the number of “helper cells” in the immune system (brain and body) and, conversely, that a reduction in the number of helper cells can dampen a joyful disposition. We also know that using our memory and skills tends to preserve nerve cells (“use it or lose it”) and that, conversely, losing nerve cells over time interferes with memory and skills.

To say “use your mind” or “use your brain” is to say the same thing. It is like saying “use your computer” versus “use your word processing program.” The features of one influence the features of the other. Ira Black (1991, p. 8) argues that our mental software and hardware are one and the same when he speaks of the “essential unity of structure and function.” When the computer is turned off, the word-processing program cannot function. Yet just because the computer is turned on, that doesn’t mean the program is being used, or being used to capacity. When the brain is dead, the mind cannot function. Yet just because the brain is alive doesn’t mean the mind is being used, or being used to capacity. In a sense, then, the best definition of mind is that it is the state that occurs when the brain is alive and at work. Richard M. Restak, who wrote the books and television series The Brain (1984), The Mind (1988), and Receptors (1994), despaired of a crisp, clear definition that could distinguish between the two, concluding, “Mind is the astounding interplay of 100 billion neurons. And more” (1988, p. 31; Note: More recent research puts this number at 23 billion, not 100). J. A. Hobson (1988, p. 230), in The Dreaming Brain, writes, “I believe that when we have truly adequate descriptions of brain and mind, dualism and all of its dilemmas will disappear. We will speak of the brain-mind as a unity, or invent some new word to describe it.” To talk of the brain is to refer to the more molecular aspects of a phenomenon, while to talk of the mind is to refer to the more molar aspects.

Cognitive and cognition are our only words that refer to both brain and mind, and the public finds them smacking of the ivory tower. We do need a new word that the public will accept—perhaps something like processor or reactor, main, or brind. Candace Pert, discoverer of the endorphin receptor, refers to the bodymind, thus enlarging the discussion. She teaches that the brain and nervous system are so widely represented throughout the body with mutual receptors that it does not make sense to speak of them separately. Meanwhile, a good discussion of the nature of the mind and various states of consciousness is available in Daniel Dennett’s Kinds of Minds (1996).

Human or Animal: What’s the Difference?

Humorists, philosophers, scientists, theologians—all have made stabs at defining the difference between humans and animals. Consider:

No animal admires another animal.

—Blaise Pascal

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

—Mark Twain

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

—Sir William Osler

The parade of quotes could quickly become tiring. I will, however, summarize both the popular and scientific efforts to describe this difference by one top-down and one bottom-up observation. The top-down observation: humans can learn to write, whereas animals can’t. The bottom-up observation: humans have a proportionately greater area of uncommitted cerebral cortex, or cortex in which unused synapses are available to be committed to new learning (see fig. 1.1). The cerebral cortex (see chapter 2 and appendix A) is the part of the brain that houses the rational functions, such as problem solving, planning, and creativity. The comparison between a rat’s brain and a human brain is dramatic. All but a sliver of the rat’s brain is “committed” to motor, auditory, somatosensory, olfactory, and visual functions—that is, survival activities. These committed, or dedicated, areas can’t be used for any other function, such as memory or problem solving, in much the same way that a word-processing machine can’t be used for other computing functions. In contrast, well over half of the human brain is uncommitted and thus available for formi...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Quick Content Guide
• Preface
• Part One. Forming a Foundation: The Context for Using Your Owner’s Manual
• 1 Getting Started: A Framework for Exploring Mind-Brain Concepts
• 2 Brain Basics: A Refresher Course in Hardware and Hormones
• 3 The Trouble with Drugs: Of Crutches and Cures
• Part Two. From the Cradle to the Grave . . . with a Turbulent Stop at Adolescence
• 4 Starting Well: Windows of Opportunity
• 5 The Tumultuous Teens: Understanding the Adolescent Brain
• 6 Finishing Well: Use It or Lose It
• 7 The Brain Gone Awry: When Your Lobes Get Sick
• 8 Sex Differences: How the Brains of Females and Males Differ
• 9 Social Neuroscience: Human Interaction and Connecting Minds
• Part Three. Wellness: Getting the Most Out of Every Day
• 10 Brain Wellness: Habits that Lead to Optimum Brain Performance
• 11 Music . . . as a Means and as an End
• 12 Powders and Elixirs: Mind-Altering Agents
• 13 Humoring the Mind: Laughter as Free (or Cheap) Medicine
• 14 Nourishment: Food for the Body, Fuel for the Brain
• 15 Love and Romance: The Wiring Is the Name of the Game
• 16 A Good Night’s Sleep: Cycles, Naps, Dreams, and Nightmares
• 17 Pain: God’s Big Joke?
• 18 The Body Cognitive: The Effects of Exercise
• 19 Woofers, Bleaters, and Mewers: The Neuroscience of Pets and Other Animals
• Part Four. Learning: The Brain as Student
• 20 How We Learn: Acquiring and Remembering Information
• 21 Giftedness: Letting the Genius Out of the Bottle
• 22 Building Babel: Acquiring and Developing Language
• 23 Learning Mathematics: Inborn Talent Is Just Part of the Equation
• Part Five. Creativity and Problem Solving: Making Mountains Out of Hills
• 24 Getting to New You: The Psychobiology of Creativity
• 25 Chipping Off the Old Block: Removing Barriers to Creativity
• 26 Creating Leverage: Brain-Based Decision Making
• 27 Neuromarketing: Brain-Based Selling and Influencing
• 28 Forensic Neuroscience: Brains, Free Will, and Legal Responsibility
• Part Six. Putting It All Together: How We Differ and What Makes Us Tick
• 29 Getting Smart about IQ: The Many Ways to Be Intelligent
• 30 The Big Five: At Last, a Universal Language for Personality Traits
• 31 EQ, Call Home: Getting Savvy about Your Emotional Side
• 32 Violence and Aggression: Running Hot and Cold in a Global Society
• 33 Stress and Burnout: The Unrelenting Fire Alarm
• 34 Happiness: The False God
• Part Seven. Closing with a Prayer: A Peek at States of Consciousness
• 35 States of Consciousness: Phases of the Mind 913
• 36 Updating Your Owner’s Manual: The Continuing Search for New Mind-Body Applications
• Appendices
• Definitions
• Bibliography: Books, Journals, and Other Resources
• Index
• Reader Participation Card
• About CentACS: The Center for Applied Cognitive Studies
• The Author
• Praise for The Owner’s Manual for the Brain
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher