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**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, and I think about it in terms of - while other life (animals and sorts) would "struggle" to stay alive, that's much more based on survival, and not struggle, in the same way. Struggle - an example I think of is like my brother and I; so I'm a twin, and when we were in elementary scho... |
So for somebody else, the struggle could be totally different. It might be that in their family history it's a substance abuse problem, or loss. You've just lost a lot of people and you're struggling with how to navigate that... Or it might be health - their health, your individual health, or someone you love. I think,... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's also like you're trying to comprehend life. The struggle really is a comprehension problem. You're trying to make sense of what you think is happening, what your truth is, in a sense; what's true to you, what's really happening. And the struggle is that comprehension process. But I also think o... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[07:40\] Right, and I think that's really a significant lie, when we do struggle... That we're like "Oh my word, nobody's ever struggled like this. I'm all alone in this, and now I can't find a way out." That actually isn't gonna help us do that struggle any better, and that's why even lo... |
In the field of neuroscience we sort of say "Name it to tame it." What I mean by that is when we're able to put words to our experiences, it changes the way in which we navigate it. |
This might be a weird example, but I always think of The Little Mermaid; and if you haven't seen it... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's been a while. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[laughs\] ...I'll remind you. There's a scene in it when Ariel, as a mermaid, is eating, or goes to eat with humans... And she picks up the fork and she's like "Oh look, it's a dinglehopper!" And then she proceeds to use it to brush her hair... Which we all know a fork is not designed to ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** And so, in our lives, if we can say, for example with emotions, "Look, crying in and of itself doesn't mean that I'm weak. I can not like it, but emotions - it's a reflection of sadness. So I'm sad." And I can take it further and go "I'm sad because I lost a loved one" or "I'm sad because ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, since you said "feel", let's go deeper into that. Of course, we're human, and we're designed to feel, but how (in the world) are we designed to feel? Why are we designed to feel? What is it about us that makes us unique in the fact that we are designed to feel? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Well, it's helpful in this regard to understand the way in which the brain is designed, and I should say the human brain... So when we talk about humans, there's three key structures that we talk about in regards to our brain. That involves our brain stem, the limbic system, and then the n... |
Our brain stem is really only responsible for essential functions, like breathing and heart rate. A parallel to this is if you think of the brain stem as the reptile, or reptilian brain; think lizard or turtle - they can't self-reflect; they're really just going about their life with trying not to die. To feed themselv... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Eat and not die. That's their life. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Correct. But we have that part of the brain, the brain stem. Above that -- well, let me give you a little visual to help you as we walk through this. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yes. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** So if you put your hand up, like you're being sworn in - so hold your right hand up beside you, and then fold your thumb across the palm of your hand, and then take your four fingers and fold them over the top of your thumb. In this analogy, your wrist would be synonymous with your brain s... |
\[12:15\] We sort of joke and say "Put your lid on", which is like "How can I manage my emotions? I put my human brain on." When we look at emotions more specifically, the seat or the emotional center of the brain is actually in that mammalian brain, so your thumb. It involves two key brain structures - your hippocampu... |
Now, bear in mind - and please, as we talk through this - the brain is always more complex than specifically saying "Oh, this part of the brain only does X, Y and Z." That's what we know for now, and research always adds to or modifies that. |
So there are ways in which the frontal lobe - we always say sort of the right prefrontal cortex - also involves emotion as well, but the primary emotional center in the brain is that amygdala. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Gotcha. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** So this is why when I say "Name it to tame it" it is so critical, because language is -- you know, while animals can converse, they all have a language, so to speak, but it's not human language, like words. So when I put on my prefrontal cortex, so I put on my neocortex, I can use words to... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I guess that's why certain brain injuries might happen - you wreck your bicycle, or something like that... I did that when I was four years old; I got a concussion... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Really? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I never had any memory loss. I actually did for a couple of days I think, because I woke up in the E.R. and I was like "What's going on?" But the symphony aspect of what you're saying there is that if one system isn't working properly, are you saying that because of that, if you have a symphony, you... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...if one aspect of that becomes injured in some sort of way, then it doesn't sound the same anymore. Is that the same, what you're saying here for our brains? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Sure, but this is what is the coolest thing about our brain - it's capable of being modified. We always say "Neurons that fire together, wire together." So a thought, at the most fundamental level, is a neuron. And that's just another word for the cell in the brain. And so once information... |
So if there's an injury, what can happen is that a neural network gets modified, and so... It's like you hit a wall, and now that information won't travel the same way. You can actually build new neural networks, but like anything else, it takes time to develop that new route or pathway in the brain. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Is that why maybe some memories get lost completely, because they become "orphaned" from ever being reconnected? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Well, memories are an interesting thing, because... You know, ironically, whenever we retrieve a memory, we actually are then changing that memory... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, really? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, because we're recalling it, and it's not happening live; it happened in the past... But I'm recalling it in the current moment, and now it has a different feel; or I got new information, and then it might get banked. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[16:04\] New associations... It's wild to think about how we can -- that's part of believing your own personal truth, your memory, and how my version of a story and your version of a story, even if we were both perfectly fine eyewitnesses - coherent, able, whatever - that your version of it and my ... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. It's actually interesting, because the research they've done with eyewitness testimony is that it is actually pretty unreliable. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Is that right? |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** It is, because of the way in which people see things, which is exactly what you're talking about. You can even see this just through the vantage point of either siblings... You're raised in the same home, you sat at the same dinner table, but what you remember occurred and what your brothe... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And back to the feelings, the way you would remember it would be based upon how it made you feel. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, and this is the coolest thing about that limbic system part of our brain, with our feelings - the one thing that we know is that the bigger the emotion, no matter whether it's positive or negative, we are more apt to remember that, because it works more like a vacuum seal. So I have ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And you mentioned neurons, and it sounds like energy of some sort... And I understand we're energy-based beings; that's also core to how we are. You mentioned I think in a previous conversation - because we have lots - this analogy with the neurons firing this excitement. I think you used the carniv... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Yeah, so neurons operate by what we call the "all or none" principle, which means they either fire or they don't. So because I tend to see things in pictures, I think of it like the game at the carnival, where you take the hammer and you hit the metal thing, and whether or not it goes all ... |
This is how we actually can change how we think... Because we can look at focusing on something else; we can say "Where attention goes, energy flows." So the more I keep my attention on one thing, that's what is going to be reinforced. So I'm choosing the channel in my brain that I wanna focus on, and if I don't have t... |
Imagine thinking about the way you drive to work. I can't really use that with you, because you -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I don't drive. I do drive, but I just don't drive to work. |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** \[laughs\] But so you drive the same route to work, and it becomes so habituated - I'm sure this has never happened to anyone - that you get home and you're like "Holy cow, how did I get here?" |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right?! |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** "I don't remember that entire drive." So it's been so habituated, that neural network is so strong that you're like "This is just what we do", and sort of on autopilot you just do it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[20:00\] That happened today, actually. We were driving somewhere -- it was last night for dinner; and I'm getting ready to make a left, and Heather is like "No, you're gonna go straight here." That happens often, by the way... But the point was when I'm at this particular stoplight I tend to make ... |
**Mireille B. Reece, Psy.D:** Right. Because your brain has just been well-practiced. So if your attention isn't on where you were switching gears to go "Oh yeah, today we're going this way", then you're just gonna do what's been automated. |
In that same thing, I'm gonna take this a step further and tie it back over to that feeling, and going - so what can happen is we get conditioned around certain emotions, and be it reinforced or sort of punished, and say "Oh, I was criticized, I was bullied whenever I cried" or "It made me feel bad when I wore this out... |
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