Exercise and Learning

As I go through my coursework, I’ll post assimilations of my reading material. Here comes one now!

From Adria.Richards' Flickr Photostream

One of the books I’m reading is Spark which is about exercise and its effects on the brain. Exercise does some amazing stuff for the old noodle, but I’m going to focus on just  the aspect of learning for now.

Big stuff appears to happen in the hippocampus, known to play a major role in long-term memory and learning. Basically, exercise causes your body to produce everything necessary to prepare you to learn something.

Learning happens via a mechanism called long-term potentiation (LTP). One neuron fires, sending glutamate (the most common activating neurotransmitter) across the synapse where it clicks into receptors on a dendrite (the receiving side of a neuron). If the neuron fires again, the genes of the receiving cell will start producing more building materials to prepare for locking in the memory. (Hence, firing and wiring together.)

Four Factors
Exercise causes more production of a particular protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF causes your neurons to branch out, creating more dendrites and synapses (places for other cells to connect to). It also binds with receptors at the synapse, increasing the flow of ions, allowing for a stronger signal.

BDNF also helps increase the uptake of IGF-1 (insulan growth factor), which helps glucose (fuel) get to cells. It also activates neurons to produce signaling neurotransmitters (serotonin and glutamate) and spurs more production of BDNF to strengthen the structure of neuronal connections.

Your cells also need oxygen, which gets mixed with the glucose to create energy (or ATP). During exercise, when oxygen can be depleted, your body produces vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) to produce new capillaries in the body and brain.

Fibroblast growth factor (FGF-2) helps tissue grow, and in the brain, it’s important to LTP (the process of solidifying connections).

Basically, these factors play roles in getting fuel to neurons and help them strengthen and grow.

Neurogenesis
There are also some studies that indicate that exercising causes production of spanking new neurons. Fred Gage of the Salk Instite, along with Peter Eriksson of Sweden showed that rodents who ran on a wheel saw an increase in the number of cells that were born. In studies of chickadees that learned new songs in the spring, a significant number of new cells in the hippocampus, showing a relationship between cell growth and learning. Henrieeta van Praag showed a direct link in learning through a study in which active mice and non-active mice were shown their escape route in an opaque pool of water, then put in a second time. Both groups swam at the same rate, but the active mice more quickly found their way out, indicating that they had more effectively learned where their exit was from the previous swim.

So exercise helps to make new cells as well as shore-up and grow the old ones. However, cells have about 28 days to find something to do by joining a network, or they die off (use it or lose it). It’s a good thing that BDNF caused more dendrites to sprout – this offers more opportunity for the new cells to connect.

One other interesting tid bit is that the more complex the motor skills involved, the more BDNF in the cerebellum (involved in motor activity). Even though these circuits are created through movement, they can be used for thinking as well – which may be why learning the piano is makes it easier to learn math.

“If we’re not moving, there’s no reason to learn anything”(p. 53).

Ratey, J. R., & Hagerman, E. (2008) Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. New York, NY: Little, Brown & Company.

I Want to Not Want

Srikumar Rao discusses many of the basic ideas of positive psychology in his book, although he has found these ideas in philosophy and in various religions, and doesn’t site research.

One important nugget of wisdom he offers is that stress comes from wanting – either wanting something or wanting the absence of something. (Rao suggests that all stress comes from this, although I’m not entirely sure about the all part.) But his point is that anxiety and upset come from not being okay with things as they are. If you stop and think about this for a moment, I think you’ll agree that it seems true. If you can feel like there’s nothing you want, this allows a calm contentment to surface.

But what is life without wanting something? Goals are an important aspect of life. Generally, we’re sizing up our lives and ourselves based on goals: Are we achieving them? Are we behind? Are we excited that we did well? Goals help us to feel like life is meaningful. We have to have some reason to get up in the morning.

There is quite a bit of research on goal orientation and pursuit, which indicates that certain types of goals are healthier than others. Some goals are downright bad for you. Essentially, goals associated with intimacy, spirituality, and generativity are correlated with higher subjective well-being (SWB). Extrinsic, materialistic goals, like power, financial success, social recognition, and good-looks, are negatively correlated with SWB (Emmons, 1991; Kasser and Ryan, 1996). On top of this, high levels of avoidance goals, such as “not getting into trouble,” (as opposed to something like “being as helpful as possible”) also negatively predicted SWB (King and Emmons, 1991). Overall, goals relating to helping others seem to be the most worthwhile.

Another tidbit that seems useful is the idea of goal concordance – that goals are aligned with the growing virtues and interests of the self. I think this is where possible stress from goals could come in, causing other wants (for instance, “I don’t want to do this assignment,” in the case of pursuing a degree that doesn’t interest you, or “I want to smack him” in the case of a relationship that isn’t serving you.)

Is a goal the same as a want?

A want is the present feeling of wishing something were different and being unhappy with the way things are. A goal is a direction to move in, something to move towards. The word “motivation” is highly related, stemming from a root that means ” a moving cause.” So, a want is a feeling in the present moment, and a goal is a future-oriented metric by which to make motion in our lives.

I’d like to end by proposing that gratitude is the antidote for wanting. When you concentrate on feeling sincerely grateful for something, wanting disappears. You feel content for the moment, and as Barbara Fredrickson has shown, this feeling of gratitude builds. You tend to feel more gratitude, and theoretically less want. This certainly needs a lot more research and thought. More on this in the future.

Psychology of Weddings

The question of why it’s important to commit to someone through marriage is certainly a difficult one. I don’t have an answer, but here are some thoughts as to why we do what we do at the wedding.

The actual ceremony makes some sense because you’re basically telling someone else that they matter to you and that you appreciate them. Gratitude appears to be a key strengthener in relationships (McCullough et al., 2001) so you’re starting off a commitment with this recognition, and it seems that from there, because you both want to keep reciprocating, things escalate. (Hopefully, you’ll reaffirm this heartfelt gratitude often – gratitude in general correlates with high subjective well-being. [McCullough et al., 2002])

You’re doing it in front of a big audience, creating a “shared reality“, which strengthens your perception of the validity of what you’re saying. (Tory Higgin’s research on “tuning” remarks – saying something either positively or negatively about someone to a mutual acquaintance. If they agree with you, or believe you, your remark is a shared reality and you’ll remember that person the way you discussed them, and not the way they actually are.) Anyway, shared realities are necessary in a relationship – you have to agree about what you’re talking about to make stuff work!

Yet another benefit of making your commitment publicly is that your heart rate is up. You’ll experience the emotion that you’re feeling (and that feeling will likely be love because it’s the dominant response created by that environment) more intensely than you would normally (Shachter and Singer, 1962). You’ll also experience subsequent events more intensely. This is compounded by the novelty of the situation. I’m sure you gathered that. You’ll tend to remember this experience pretty darn well because it’s probably an emotional highlight in your life.

Your family is definitely getting something out of it – more family and positive affect (at least momentarily). They’re watching something morally good, probably feeling a sense of “elevation” which causes you to produce oxytocin (Silvers and Haidt, 2008) and to be more open to bonding with the people around you. It makes you want to be love-y and it makes you tend to trust (which helps explain lots of dirty bridesmaids). So this is beneficial for these new family relations who are just meeting each other. They’ll likely be more accepting and open. And the booze helps. They’re also getting an opportunity to create one big in-group, as opposed to an in-group and an out-group. (Which happens a lot with in-laws. And country warfare.)

The actual commitment? It’s an agreement that you’ve both stopped looking around. You’re not being grass-is-greener anymore, and you’re gonna build a life together – intertwine. Yeah, you can have this without marriage. But the identity is muddled. (This is my own theory, here.) You’re a wife or a husband when you’re married. Identity is a pretty important thing, and it usually needs to be clear – it helps you understand your contributions. You can still have this without marriage, but it’s a little less clear. You’re a boyfriend or girlfriend without marriage, which is a label implying a youthful and ephemeral nature. And since language affects the way we think (we often think in words, especially when assimilating), it’s important to be able to think about your identity. What you do in your job relates you to society, you’re a son and a brother and friend and this all relates you specifically to other people, and tends to lend significance. I think the commitment is also a promise that you’ll maintain that gratitude for one another throughout, which sets you up for some mentally healthy kids – and you’ll also probably live longer.

And if it helps, the top 10% of most reportedly satisfied people are married but it looks like it tends to go down a bit after the wedding. Still, companionship grows.

Piano Lessons

I finally realized why learning the play the piano is important. Most kids probably won’t become concert pianists, so why do we bother putting them in lessons for something that they’ll probably never really use much? 

It’s pretty clear that when we’re taking piano lessons, we’re learning to control our hands – how to do one thing with one hand and something else with the other hand. 

But what we’re actually learning is awareness. We’re learning to pay attention, and to control our attention. And the more you develop as a pianist, the more awareness you’re developing. You start out learning to control each hand separately, like playing chords in one hand and a simple melody in the other hand. Then you begin to learn finger independence – fingers each playing different melodies, for example. Then you learn to weight the fingers differently, lending different dynamic nuances to the different melodies. It takes intense focus to realize that the weight can be much more relaxed if it comes from your arm, and your fingers just guide it. You’re also learning to understand the emotional content of the music, and how it’s structure fits together in the piece as a whole. You may even begin to notice that your breathing affects how you play.

All of this is development of awareness – development of the ability to notice.  Our experience is shaped by where we choose to put our limited amount of attention. The better we can control our attention, the better we can control our experience. It is through experience – interaction with the environment – that we develop our identity. I’ll get to that in a second.

Experience is the medium of perception. The better we can control our experience, the better we can control our perception. And, the better we can control our perception, the better we can control our experience. We may have emotion that we don’t initially control – frustration for instance – but as soon as we recognize it, as soon as we have an awareness of it, we can choose to perceive the situation differently, which changes our experience. We can choose to have more positive emotion versus negative emotion. When we develop a deep awareness, we can maneuver ourselves away from a depression. We can create more happiness – joy, appreciation, hope… – even if we are already happy.

Identity. This is how you perceive your relationship with the world. It’s a step on the way of having a life that we consider worthwhile. Identity gives you a framework from which you can contribute to the world. 

If you develop a deep awareness through playing the piano, and you become a pianist, this is your identity, and you may find that your contribution is creating music that allows other people to focus and develop their awareness.

Elevation

I noticed on Urlesque today there was an article about a new State Farm commercial. What interested me was how the author described his reaction:

Those tricksters at State Farm premiered their campaign featuring people helping people … and it will pretty much make you want to hug everyone within a five mile radius.

Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia has done research on the feeling of “elevation,” which indicates that oxytocin is released when people see a virtuous act. Oxytocin is a hormone known to cause bonding, feelings of trust, and calmness. That seems to fit pretty well with what this author is describing.

Elevation is one of a few experiences associated with inspiration. (Perhaps this writer got up and did something virtuous after seeing this commercial – though it’s unlikely because of oxytocin’s calming effects. I’m sure State Farm hopes he bought insurance.) Admiration (associated with skill) and awe (associated with vastness) are two others experiences that might be involved in inspiration. What inspires you to actually get up and do something?

Time is Yours, Use it for Good Stuff

In a blog post discussing the implications of being diagnosed with a life threatening disease, Derek Beres writes:

Being someone who engages in physical activity every day, at times I come across people who tell me things like, “I’d like to work out more often, but I don’t have the time,” or, “If I had the time, I’d eat more healthfully.” And I always reply with the same answer: if you don’t have the time, who does? Who is it so in control of your time that you no longer have any say in it?…. Nobody can make use of our time better than we can, so best to use it to the best of our abilities.

This seems so obvious, yet so easy to forget. We get caught up with the stuff we think we have to do, like working too much so we can buy stuff we think we need. Most people I know don’t ask why too often. Our emotional inertia keeps us moving without thinking too much. It’s tougher to reconsider why you’re doing what you’re doing than to just do it. But your time is your life. It is your experiences. It is what makes you yourself. In the words of Nolan’s Batman, “It’s what you do that defines you,” and why you do it is at the heart of finding meaning.

It’s worth it to take some time, precious time, to figure out what really matters to you and to understand why it matters. I think understanding why it matters is the motivating factor. Even understanding why whatever you currently do is important will be extremely helpful in creating a positive outlook on life.

I’m a middle class American woman, and I have the extreme privilege of being able to change my life in many many ways. (In The Happiness Hypothesis Jonathon Haidt discusses how people who feel they have the ability to make changes are generally happier.) Many people also have this ability, but it can seem scary or selfish or impossible to do something different. We’re all striving toward happiness (I hope), and there are two possibilities within everyone’s grasp to achieve more of it: change your life, or change your perception of life. Generally, you need the latter to do the former. Basically, you can either try to see things in your life that you perceive as negative in a more positive light, – like making the job of filing papers more interesting by racing yourself – or you can change your life to minimize the negative aspects – like changing jobs, or going back to school. But to change your life, you need to see it as feasible. You need to validate the possibility of changing jobs in some way, realizing that you’re working to maintain a life that isn’t making you happy enough to justify the negativity of it.

However, we adapt to most anything eventually. We get bored, and our level of satisfaction dwindles. We can constantly keep upping the ante – this is what “climbing the ladder” and “career” are all about. Meaning, however, seems to be something that does not fade. Dr. Martin Seligman (please check out his TED talk) defines “meaning” as contributing to something greater than yourself. I think he is missing one tiny element – what you contribute to must be something you believe in. I’m not sure how to define “belief in” something, but I’m referring to the feeling that it is beneficial and important to the world. Based on that, contributing to the thing that you think is most important to the world will give you meaning, lasting happiness. So take the time to find it. It’s your time. It’s your life.

Yoeman Warders Have Purpose

I was thinking about my trip to London last year, and my favorite thing was visiting London Tower. This is where they keep the crown jewels, where Anne Boleyn was executed, and where many a British monarch has lived.
One thing that was particularly notable was how seriously the Yeoman Warders took their positions. While they are mostly tour guides, they also live on the Tower premises with their families and are in charge of taking care of it and protecting it. To apply for the position you have to have been in the British Armed Forces for at least 22 years and have received several medals. It’s a very honorable position, different from anything I know of here in the US.

If this weren’t the way of doing things – if anyone could apply as tour guide at the London Tower, it would have been a pretty run-of-the-mill experience, I think. Instead, the guides had absolute knowledge of the Tower, and ours didn’t seem to get tired of discussing the same history he must repeat several times a day. And he was engaging. I asked him if he enjoyed it (from his jovial demeanor, I was pretty sure I would get an affirmative), and he was extremely convincing in his response, expressing that he was protecting and perpetuating history of the country he had served for so long. It was no trivial job. He had a purpose, and he while he enjoyed it, he also took it very seriously.

Emotional Inertia: what keeps us moving

People tend to keep doing what they’re doing until something significant changes. They lose their job, or get sick, or become inspired by an experience.

For example, Steve Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985. He regrouped, and started NeXT (where he cultivated aesthetic priority), which was later bought by Apple. He cites being fired as a way he got lucky in his 2005 Stanford commencement address:

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

A friend coined the term “emotional inertia” for this force that keeps us moving once we are in motion. It works pretty well as a comparison: It’s hard to get moving again when you stop; It’s hard to change directions once in motion; And it’s easy to stay moving once in motion (even if it’s not the right direction).

We at WhoYouNotice.com propose that you check in with yourself now and then to cultivate more meaning in your life. Ask yourself why you do what you do. Why is it important? If it’s not what you want to be doing, why not, and what would you rather do? WYN also endeavors to help you move in that new direction by putting your thoughts out there to attract opportunities.

Asking yourself these questions may seem obvious, but it’s not always easy to answer them. And it’s because these questions are difficult that people keep pumping along, perpetuating the routines, maintaining their emotional inertia. Take the time to think it through. If life is what you deem it, don’t deem it mundane.

More on Purpose by Accident

Most people enjoy what they do for a living because it gives them engagemtn or flow. Flow is the state of being so engrossed in something that you that you lose track of time, you forget that you are the person doing it, you have a clear goal, and you have a way of measuring how well you’re doing. It has to be something that has just the right amount of challenge, but not too much. After engaging in flow, you feel a sense of self-affirmation. You might be getting flow when you play tennis, design a house, or practice an instrument.

But what defines where you put this effort? For the most part, it is wherever the company that hires you tells you to put it. Or, if you’ve got a hefty resume, wherever the company that will pay you the most tells you to put it. In some cases, people may seek out an organization that has a well-defined purpose that they are passionate about, like, say, One Laptop Per Child. (The founder of OLPC discusses how being a non-profit allows for clarity of purpose, and it attracts the best minds available.) But many people simply do what’s logical for their career.

I think we tend not to question this because we are brought up to think that wealth, fame, career and success lead to a good life. But a career is important only to the person who makes it. You can contribute to the world through a career, but a career in itself is not a contribution. Therefore, it really shouldn’t be a purpose in itself. Nor should wealth, fame, or success. These are things that you might get in pursuit of a purpose, but pursuing them with no further intention is self-centric, and likely, ultimately unfulfilling.

Purpose is defined as the reason something exists or is done. Of course, there is much debate as to why we exist at all, but each of us, personally, has a unique perspective and our own insights and strengths that we can put toward a purpose that we deem important.

Let me give you some examples. A single mother who works three jobs to pay the rent isn’t directly pursuing money, she’s pursuing the welfare of her children. A lawyer that takes public interest cases instead of working for the highest paying client is pursuing his own purpose.

Purpose is a necessary component in Meaning. In positive psychology, “meaning” is a component of a deep, lasting happiness that is achieved by using your strengths to contribute to something greater than yourself. I tend to think that when people say they feel empty, or that they are filling a void, usually what they are really saying is that they do not experience meaning.

So, let’s say that you could do whatever you get flow doing and also help end poverty. Wouldn’t you feel better about your work? You might – it depends on how important you think it is to end poverty. Maybe you think global warming is a much more important problem, and helping to solve it would give you meaning. Knowing what you are passionate about is helpful.

Why do we keep asking ourselves what we want to be when we grow up, when we should be asking why we want to be?  The moral of this post is: yes, it feels nice to do well at something, but it feels much nicer to do well for a purpose that matters to us.

Golden Parachutes

When Fannie and Freddie hired their CEOs, what were they looking for? I have relatively little idea what a CEO needs to be, exactly. But I would presume that when hiring for any position, you would want someone who cares about the purpose of the company.

What is the purpose of Fannie or Freddie? They loan people money for a mortgage, and make money by charging interest. Their purpose could be helping people to start lives and families, but when they loaned money to people they knew could not afford their payments if interest rates rose, this could not have been their purpose. Maybe this lack of real purpose (making money doesn’t count) made it particularly difficult to find a CEO interested in propelling the company forward, and the only ones available were money-motivated. Regardless, why would you want to give incentives to be fired to anyone? Why should you get anything at all if you are voted out? It seems to be a ridiculous idea that must have begun when companies forgot their purpose.