Your Mind and your Brain

Today (tonight?) is going to be a bit of a biology and psychology lesson. Don't worry, I promise it will be painless, interesting and fun.

Kieran and I play this game, when I'm over at his house to work for the day. We each take turns getting hooked up with our biotech equipment, while the other reads and interprets the results. For your terms of understanding: our work uses a lot of different monitoring sensors, that tell us how a subject's body is reacting. The key idea behind the equipment is that the subject-themselve isn't consciously aware of the subtle changes within their body, depending on the situation and their potential medical or psychological circumstance.

The best sensors to play with are the EEG (a.k.a. brain) sensors. As one of us acts as the test subject, the other places the sensors on whichever sites of interest and monitors the subject's different brain waves during a task or question. The neurons in your brain fire are different rates and times, depending on your state of conscious, mood and where in the brain you're looking at. The sensors can detect all of that. Depending on the site of placement for the sensors and the level of knowledge you have regarding the subject, you can learn a lot.

From playing a simple computer game we get from our work, Kieran can tell instantly when I get bored and lose focus by only looking at what the sensors are reading.

With the right sensor placement, I can tell if Kieran is brooding over some past situation. If I ask him a question about his deadbeat Dad (those are my words, not his) his brain switches instantly to intense focus and feeling stressed.

In a way, this is me. Click to enlarge. If you understand it, I should give you a job.

Everyone's brain is just a collection of neurons with specific connections and activity rates. A person with some form of psychological problem, however, is likely to have a different set of neurons connections and firing rates, when compared to the brains of the general population. At a specific site of the brain, someone with a mental problem could have intense activity when the average person has very little, or vice-versa. For example, if you look at a teenager with ADHD, the neurons in certain parts of his brain fire too slowly, which puts him/her in a state of automatic drowsiness or feeling zoned-out. Similarly, some people with psychological problems lack the correct communication between two areas of their own brain, when compared to the connections of an average person. Anyone with Down Syndrome is an unfortunate example of where the brain is severely incapable of communicating with itself. Sites of his brain for emotions can't get information from sites of his brain that process the objects in his environment... so in the end they just can't understand things around him.

What does this mean? Some people mentally feel the way they are because their brain isn't capable of processing information like it should. They feel a certain way because they are incapable of anything else. If the neurons don't fire normally, how can the ADHD kid possibly stay calm or focused on learning something? He can't.

There's always hope though: your brain, it's neuron connections and activity rates are malleable. Neurons can rewire to communicate with new areas and also learn to be more or less active. Through specific training, a teenager with ADHD can change his own brain so that be can effortlessly stay focused.

People aren't always born with these bad brain connections; they can be made on their own. The brain of a person who suffers from long term depression changes its neuronal connections to better imitate that emotional state. This means that the effects of an abusive relationship or hopeless outlook, extended over months or more, can lead to a brain being wired to naturally feel depressed by default, even after the person frees themselves from that shitty relationship or life gets better. Effectively, your environment can change your brain.

Kieran: Think of something happy and tell me about it.

Me: Ok...I'm thinking of [friend's name]'s summer party and jumping off the boat house. Haha, then all of us streaking.

Ah yes, the boathouse

Kieran: Hehe, nice. Ok, now think of something neutral...like doing laundry.

Me: Alright.

Kieran: Yup, I can see it now. It's nothing wrong but this part of your brain fires a little slower than it should. It might be layover from you used to be depressed...

Me: Ya, probably...

Physical trauma also rewires the brain. If you get hit hard enough in the head, the momentum of the impact causes your brain to strike against your skull. That type of hit obviously fucks up neuron connections.

Me: You know, this area of your head doesn't respond like this other part.

Kieran: I could understand that. When those guys jumped me after my soccer game, that's the part of my head that hit the concrete.

Me: Jeez, I'm surprised you can remember that.

Kieran: Ya, I can only remember up to that impact and nothing else.

You shouldn't worry about every little bump or extended bad mood though. Your brain is resilient - it's good at repairing itself.

And now you know a little more.