16 Apple Spring 2016

Building brains

As we learn more about the brain, one of the biggest surprises is how it changes, develops and processes information. Until recently, neuroscientists thought our brain finished developing when we reached our 20s. They now realize our brain never stops changing. It develops through a lifetime (with the biggest bursts in early childhood and the teen years) and can change minute by minute. These small changes can add up to big changes over time.

Better understanding how our brain works can help us be healthier

The speed of thinking—and change Your brain goes both fast and slow

and make positive changes in our lives.

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman says our thinking can be divided into two types: fast and slow. Fast thinking, what he calls System I, is comfortable, automatic and where our brain likes to be at all times. For example, if you’re walking with a friend and she asks: “What is two plus two?” you will immediately think of the answer four without missing a step.

Slow thinking, or what Kahneman calls System 2, takes more effort. For example, you are walking with

your friend and she asks: “What is 24 X 237?” For all but the most math-gifted, answering this will mean having to stop walking, shutting out distractions and concentrating so hard it almost hurts your brain. Try it!

The answer is 5,688, but you knew that.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows what parts of the brain “light up” when we think. System 2 thinking lights up many more areas of the brain than System 1 thinking, indicating that more energy is involved and therefore more effort.

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Brain books worth reading

Your Brain at Work and Quiet Leadership by David Rock

Conversational Intelligence by Judith Glaser

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge

System 2 thinking is so demanding that our brain tries to avoid it, but both types of thinking are needed every day. You would not want to have to stop and think carefully when a car was coming straight at you—System 1 springs you into action to avoid it. System 2 thinking helps you work through complex thoughts and actions, such as long division or writing an essay.

How we think, along with everything we think and feel, comes from our brain’s neural connections and its collections of connections called neural pathways. For example, when you think about the word “snow,” a whole chain of thoughts and feelings associated with your memories and experiences of snow is activated.

David Rock, the author of Your Brain at Work and Quiet Leadership, says our default mode for trying to

change a habit (or well-established way of thinking and acting) is to try and unwire what is already there. That, he says, is like trying to get rid of the Grand Canyon.

It is far easier, says Rock, to cut a small new path in the rock and grow it over time. Rather than try to stop a behaviour, we can be more successful if we start a new behaviour, and let the old behaviour, fade away. The more we do the new behaviour, the more ingrained new neural connections and pathways become.

We create new neural connections and pathways all the time: by read-ing, talking with someone or doing a new activity. We create stronger neural connections and pathways (which can easily be accessed by System 1) when, over time, we think about these things, talk to someone about them, picture them in our mind or write about them.

Getting new learning into System 1 ensures that it is readily available for you the next time it’s called upon.

And when that happens, you’ll know you’ve successfully changed your brain.

— Dr. Laura Calhoun and Terry Bullick