4 Reasons Your Brain Needs Quiet
As life gets more hectic, there’s less and less time to just sit there and do nothing. Yet mounting evidence shows the benefits of giving your brain a chance to pause and reflect.
It turns out that your brain “at rest” is actually quite active. It’s just using a different network of connections than it does at other times. This downtime network may help you sharpen your thinking skills, make sense of your world, develop compassion and understanding, and protect your mental health, according to a July 2012 article in Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Downtime for Your Brain
The article, penned by University of Southern California professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and two colleagues, focuses on the brain’s default mode. This is the network that’s switched on whenever you take a mental breather and turn your focus inward. Your brain slips into default mode for reflection, daydreaming, meditation, and zoning out.
Quiet reflection has long been a cornerstone of many spiritual practices and psychotherapy techniques. But it wasn’t until scientists began doing brain imaging studies that they got their first glimpse of what’s happening inside the brain during this time.
To study the default mode, volunteers might be asked to stare for several minutes at a plus sign shown in the center of their field of vision. Or they might simply be asked to close their eyes and relax. Then researchers use imaging technology to see which areas of the volunteers’ brains are activated. It turns out to be a different pattern of activity than what’s seen when people focus on something outward, such as solving math problems, listening to a story, or looking at pictures.
According to Immordino-Yang and her coauthors, that means the brain is processing things differently in default mode. Scientists are just starting to explore what happens during this state. Below are a few of the good things that may occur when outward attention goes offline.
Reason 1: Sharpen Your Thinking Skills
Reading a book, remembering facts, and taking a test are all outward-focused tasks. You might think the brain’s default mode would be irrelevant for these tasks—but new research suggests otherwise. A brain that functions well in default mode may also work better at other times.
Immordino-Yang and her coauthors cite studies showing stronger connectivity in the default network of people with high IQs, compared to people with average IQs. It’s not the amount of activity in the default network that’s different. Instead, it’s the efficiency of communication between various regions of the brain that are active when the brain is “at rest.”
Reason 2: Make Sense of Your World
When your attention is turned outward, you’re taking in a lot of social and emotional information. But what does it all mean? Monks, philosophers, and psychoanalysts have long claimed that introspection helps make sense of social and emotional experience. Now scientists are chiming in about how quiet reflection may lead to such valuable insights.
Immordino-Yang and her coauthors note that the brain’s default mode isn’t used a lot for thinking about the concrete, immediate facts of social and emotional situations. Instead, it’s used for more abstract things, such as judging emotional qualities in yourself and other people, understanding moral implications, and fantasizing about the future.
Reason 3: Develop Compassion and Understanding
In the long run, this type of abstract thinking may help you understand others better. In an imaging study from Harvard University, volunteers shifted into default mode when asked to imagine how their opinions might change if they woke up one day as the opposite sex.
Quiet reflection may also help you feel compassion for others or draw inspiration from them. In a study led by Immordino-Yang, volunteers underwent brain scans while viewing realistic stories about other people’s struggles and achievements. The volunteers’ brains shifted into default mode when feeling compassion for a young mother with cancer or admiring her courage.
Reason 4: Protect Your Mental Health
A healthy balance between default mode and non-default mode time seems to be crucial for mental well-being. Research in people with autism has shown weak connectivity within the default network. This might be related to low levels of social and emotional awareness.
Research in people with schizophrenia has shown abnormal connections in the default network, which doesn’t shut down the way it should when attention turns outward. This might lead to a blurring of the boundaries between what’s in the mind and what’s in the outside world.
Other abnormalities in this brain network have been linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder. So if your default network isn’t working properly, the result could be a mental disorder.
And if it is working well, using it enough may be essential for optimal mental health. For personal growth and mental well-being, don’t just do something. Sit there!
No comments:
Post a Comment