Category: Brain and memory

In the previous post  I cited Norman Doidge who walked us through what happens in a normal brain when presented with a problem. Doidge has contrasted how the normal brain compares to the brain of a person who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD):

“…the brain of the obsessive-compulsive does not move on or ‘turn the page.’ Even though he has corrected his spelling mistake, washed the germs off his hands, or apologized for forgetting his friend’s birthday, he continues to obsess. His automatic gearshift does not work, and the mistake feeling and its pursuant anxiety build in intensity.

We know that Doidge is correct because of brain scans that have been performed on people who struggle with obsessions. Repeat brain scans have also been performed on the same patients after successful therapy and shown that the brains had normalized. Continue reading →

In Dr. Norman Doidge’s book The Brain that Changes Itself, Doidge explains what happens in a normal brain when we make a mistake or have reason to feel anxiety over something:

“Normally, when we make a mistake, three things happen. First, we get a ‘mistake feeling,’ that nagging sense that something is wrong. Second, we become anxious, and that anxiety drives us to correct the mistake. Third, when we have corrected the mistake, an automatic gearshift in our brain allows us to move on to the next thought or activity. Then both the ‘mistake feeling’ and the anxiety disappear.”

In neurological terms, the first level Doidge describes, where we detect mistakes, occurs with the part of our brain known as the orbital frontal cortex. The second level, where we become anxious because of the mistake, occurs in the part of our brain known as the cingulate gyrus, located deep inside the cortex. The third level, which allows the brain to shift gears and move on after the mistake has been corrected, occurs in the part of the brain known as the caudate nucleus.

In a follow-up post we will compare this normal process to the brain of someone who suffers from OCD.

Further Reading

• EPPP study material, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and You

In our previous posts ‘Perception and Expectations’, we discussed some of the ways a person’s self-perception can be conditioned by his or her expectations. A fascinating article on the Science-Based Medicine website has suggested some applications this same principle might have in treating various illnesses and pathologies:

“Much of chronic illness is learned behavior. Would sufferers from chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia recover faster if they could somehow re-map their neurons into healthy patterns?… A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine described the effects of mild traumatic brain injury in soldiers returning from Iraq. These soldiers had a high incidence of associated health problems, but when they controlled for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, there was no longer any significant association with adverse health outcome.”

“They discuss the implications of telling a patient he has a traumatic brain injury versus telling him he has recovered from a concussion and his symptoms are due to treatable, transient depression and/or stress reactions. They say, ‘…the most compelling efficacy data highlight the importance of education to normalize symptoms and provide expectation of rapid recovery.’…

“In psychotherapy, when we delve into childhood traumas, are we reinforcing brain maps for the sick role and the victim label? Wouldn’t it be more effective to concentrate on the current life situation and reinforce what coping skills the patient already has? Instead of ‘Poor you, you can’t get along with your boss because your Mommy didn’t love you’ what if we said, ‘Good for you, you’ve overcome a bad start in life and have finished school, you have a girlfriend, you have become good at making friends, and you coped with the recent death of your dog by playing sports to keep your mind off your grief. You’ve done well, so let’s look at how you can use some of those strengths and coping skills to help you solve this current problem.’ What if we helped consolidate the positive brain maps and helped prevent negative brain maps from wiring together? If nothing else, the concepts of neuroplasticity can contribute to a brain-based understanding of what various psychotherapies can accomplish….”

I’d like to begin this post with a little exercise. I want you to count how many ‘Fs’ are in the following passage:

Remember what your answer is and we’ll come back to it in the next post. At the moment, I’d like to briefly switch gears and share some interesting facts about the brain.

In the brain neurons don’t communicate directly with each other because they don’t actually touch. Instead they secrete chemical molecules (called neurotransmitters) which travel across the gaps (called synapses). Neurotransmitters can link neurons in an almost infinite amount of ways. Indeed, the average neuron communicates with between 1000 and 10,000 other cells! The patterns that regulate these links are called neuro-pathways and here is a good explanation of how neuro-pathways work, taken from ‘The Brain 101’: Continue reading →

In her book, Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray, anthropologist Helen Fisher notes that during Elizabethan times it was the custom for a woman to keep a peeled apple under her arm long enough for it to absorb her scent. Once the apple was fully saturated with her odor, she would offer the ‘love apple’ as a gift to her boyfriend, who could then enjoy his lovers’ smell during her absence.

Fisher further explained that “Today in parts of Greece and the Balkans, some men carry their handkerchiefs in their armpits during festivals and offer these odoriferous tokens to the women they invite to dance; they swear by the results. In fact, sweat is used around the world as an ingredient in love potions.”

To us this seems strange, if not downright gross, and there’s a reason why we feel like that. In the next post we will explain why we feel like as we do about body odor, and why other societies find body odor to have an erotic charm. Unpacking this question will lead us into a discussion of some fascinating recent discoveries about the human brain.