Brain Traps

CONTROLLER, CONSCIOUSNESS, REASON AND LANGUAGE

An astounding development can be observed in the evolution of the mammalian brain from shrew brain to modern man’s brain. Over the course of the last 200,000 years, the cerebrum, and especially the cerebral cortex, have both greatly increased in size. Not only have they increased in volume, but most noticeably, the outermost surface of the merely one-millimeter thick layer of the brain has increased and differentiated itself by leaps and bounds. Particularly striking is the pronounced development of the foremost part of the cerebrum known as the frontal lobe or prefrontal cortex. As witnessed with the frog and shrew brains, the development of this new hardware created new software, or behavioral repertoires, that led to three central and closely interrelated skills: awareness, understanding and reason, and language. These skills are only present in humans, apart from a few analogous developments in non-primates. Only we humans are able to think about the fact that we are thinking about the fact that we are thinking about something.

Consciousness

We are able to recognize ourselves in the mirror (at least most of the time) and think about the fact that we are thinking. We consciously experience the world. One of the most ingenious and noteworthy features associated with the development of the cerebral cortex, and more specifically with the development of our consciousness, is the emergence of a unique network. This network uses very little information directly received from our sensors – our eyes, ears, nose, etc. (although subjectively, it may feel like it does). It actually receives about ninety percent of its information filtered through our frog and shrew brain. This is why I find the term controller very befitting to describe the role assigned to the cerebral cortex, and in particular the frontal lobe.

Our controller processes the pre-modulated frog and shrew world view, and out of that creates the conscious perception of an extra, subjective reality. Consciousness can be described as an interpretation of the inner world. For example, if you look at the complex process of riding a bike and all of the subconsciously perceived actions which are necessary to coordinate focused movement, in the conscious reality all these actions are only perceived as the recognition that we are cycling straight ahead. We are no longer aware of the individual components of the process; instead, we simply perceive the mere fact that we are riding a bike. The perceived information is made abstract and simplified, while redundant information is reduced to a minimum in order to allow us to focus on more important things.

If we look at the process of human development, we can see that a person needs anywhere from half a year to two years to fully develop this ability. (I mean awareness, of course, not cycling.)

Understanding and Reason

A simple example comes to mind to illustrate the skills of understanding and reason. If a hungry shrew is running along a river bank and sees a bush on the opposite bank, and its frog brain gives it the command to go and get something to eat, then it will act on that command. It will take a risk and jump unless it did not do well in a similar situation in the past, or has observed another member of the same species that failed in a similar situation. If it has not yet developed a red or green folder to fit this exact situation, meaning neither a positive nor a negative memory, then it will take the risk. Any other member of the same species which happens to observe it will be able to learn from its action. It will not be able to predict the consequences of its actions. Unfortunately, the shrew-logic strategy of needing to observe, one we have already examined, only works if there is a sufficient number of offspring to witness the learned behavior. In the long term, and with a maximum of fifteen and up to twenty children in a female's life, the principle of trial and error and observing the consequences has proven to be unsuccessful. With such a small number of offspring, it is important to protect the lives of each and every one.

The ability to contemplate whether or not we might be able to successfully implement a specific idea in a specific way is also the ability to be able to allow an idea to die in theory without actually ever having tried it out in practice. In addition, we have the ability to consider an alternative solution and draw from our experiences, otherwise known as rational planning and thinking. It is our capacity for logical thinking, in other words our mind, with which we are able to open a stored folder and consciously recall a memory or an idea and implement it.

This enables us to recombine our knowledge, and use it to find and create new solutions to existing problems. This is why the mind is referred to as fluid intelligence in neurosciences. We are creative beings and possess the ability to invent and think through alternative options whenever we so desire. You remember the shrew mother who had that unpleasant experience with the lynx in the forest clearing? That shrew will remember this event only when it sees the same clearing or finds itself in a very similar situation. When it does, it will immediately get scared and flee. The usability of the shrew memory is contextual.

Through reason we can use our experiences in yet another way. We can reflect on the consequences of the behavior proposed to us by our inner frog and shrew and discern whether or not the proposed impulse behavior may prove disadvantageous for us in the long run. The controller manages this by delaying or suppressing actions that have already been subconsciously planned. Psychologists refer to this as cognitive control. Apparently, even our ancestors did not consider it a disadvantage to literally “have oneself under control.” Our reason motivates and enables us to pursue a goal over a longer period of time. Our ability to stay motivated is dependent on the logic of our shrew brain. This is apparent through the direct feedback we receive on the progress we make through our efforts. Through the deliberate suppression of our subconscious impulses, we are able to stay motivated and more focused for longer periods of time, and therefore achieve long-term goals. We will see that the exact evolutionary throwback can be found in today’s digitalized and fragmented working world. Our reason is strongly impaired by stress, chronic multitasking, constant interruptions, and distractions. Our ability to reasonably reflect on a problem is limited at best. We are being forced to regress to the development stage in which our direct reaction to an incident or an occurrence was solely dictated by our emotions.

There is another important point that we need to consider when speaking about the relationship between our subconscious emotions, our conscious feelings, and our physical reactions. We have seen that our basic needs – food and sex drive, aggression, bonding, safety and curiosity – are dictated by our frog and shrew programs, which go back millions of years. The combination of these basic programs gives way to at least seven different emotional states which guide our decisions, and which we can clearly and physically observe in our day to day lives. These emotions are: happiness, anger, disgust, fear, contempt, sadness, and surprise. By the way, these emotional states are expressed and understood in the same way across all cultures and in all peoples. They are genetically inherited, and not socially or culturally nurtured, and as such belong to our basic programming. In addition to facial expression, our emotional states also have a direct physical impact. For instance, our heart starts to race, our stomach hurts, our digestion goes crazy, our face turns red, and our hands start to tremble. These are physical reactions that prepare us to fight or to flee. It is extremely difficult for our controller to control these reactions, in spite of the fact that in the face of a possible confrontation, it would make more sense not to reveal one's own fear to an opponent. You can frequently observe people trying to use their self-control to help them act as if they were calm, cool, and relaxed in situations such as gang fights, difficult negotiations, or in a round of poker.

Fear and acute stress reduce the amount of saliva produced in the mouth, which is why spitting at your opponent’s feet although your heart may be racing a million miles per hour may come across as quite impressive. It signals that you still have enough saliva available, and that you are not at all stressed out by the situation. This is one of our more ancient behavioral programs. Of course, this only holds true for archaic rivals fighting in the savannah, and for teenagers. Please do not be tempted to try this out in your next monthly meeting!

The stronger the emotion, the stronger the body's response and the stronger its associated subjective perception of stress. The opposite holds true as well – the lower the physical reaction, the weaker the subjective perception! Anyone who has successfully controlled the side effects of his anger through physical activity is familiar with the connection. As soon as the body can release the stress hormones through movement, both body and mind are calmed. The frog brain, the shrew brain, and the body form one unit and are inextricably linked in their mode of operation.

We have already seen that the ability to “read” the momentary attitude of other herd members was an essential precondition for peaceful coexistence in hierarchically structured communities, because it allowed for the prediction of possible consequences.

Language

The third ability exists only in humans and is a highly differentiated sound modulation known as speech. (Although, I'm not sure if the description “highly differentiated” can truly be applied to all the speech of modern day individuals.) In general, we can say that in comparison to our closest animal relatives, the language developed and used by humans is much more complex. Only in a drunken stupor of alcoholic cheerfulness, just shortly before that moment in which we begin to lose all capacity to articulate in our mother tongue, do we begin to approach the level of speech common in chimpanzees and bonobos. Through our complex language, we humans are faster and more differentiated, because we are not merely dependent on the time-consuming act of learning through example and observation. Instead, we can simply express ourselves through speech, and know that we will be understood. “Don’t go to the XY clearing. A lynx family lives there and that’s where I was nearly eaten!”

Just because we developed human language does not mean that we lost our shrew communication (observe others and derive conclusions). Even if we can’t always fully perceive it, it is still readily available. Consequently, our words do not always correspond with our behavior. Psychologists have noted in this context that people more often tend to critique and demand specific behavior in others if they actually expect it of themselves, and most especially when they themselves do not implement the behavior in question. A leader or a parent who frequently demands diligence, consistency, and accuracy, yet obviously displays the opposite behavior, will be perceived as untrustworthy. That brings me to another formula:

Actions / Words = Credibility (Actions divided by words equals credibility)

This means that the more words we utter, the more difficult it becomes to match them with appropriate behavior in order to maintain a high degree of credibility. Conversely, it also means that the more visible deeds we perform, the fewer words we need to maintain our credibility. The logical conclusion would obviously be to only critique or demand those things from others which you are sure that you yourself do and have done for a long period of time. In view of this context, let me describe two classic situations.

Example 1: The boss comes back from an executive management seminar feeling highly motivated, armed with new knowledge, tips, and tools, and immediately tries to implement some of them with his staff the next day. Unfortunately, they are only all too familiar with this behavior, having experienced it before, and think, “Great. The boss just got back from another seminar and now he’s spouting all that motivational stuff again, but in about two weeks everything will be forgotten.” And that’s usually exactly what happens. A profuse amount of words and explanations can only be perceived as credible if the sender himself has been able to demonstrate the appropriate and correlating behavior in the recent past.

Example 2: The boss regularly arrives late to meetings and is poorly prepared. He always has a good excuse, but at the same time requires punctuality and meticulous preparation from his staff. This will not do much for his credibility. If we take into consideration that because of the shrew logic of subconscious observation, we tend to frequently copy the behavior of important role models without reflection, it becomes more and more clear why the staff continue to be faced with this type of meeting style.

INADEQUATE MEMORY

As we have seen, simplistically speaking, our brain can be divided into three areas: the frog, the shrew and the controller, each with its own specific history and unique perception and perspective. The logical question arises: Just how do these areas communicate with each other in order to reach a common decision about which behavioral trigger to activate in a given situation?

Possibly, your inner frog might just say, “Let’s put the book down, go to the fridge, and eat everything in sight.” Then your shrew might jump in and say, “Wait a minute. The dopamine being released right now by reading feels good and motivating. Let’s keep reading.” When the task of reading starts making you feel a little tired, the controller might say, “But this material is new and interesting! Let’s keep going.” It might also add, “If you put the book down in the middle of the chapter, you’ll just have to start from the beginning again because you won’t be able to hold that train of thought and it will be irritating. We’ve experienced that before and it’s frustrating. Let’s finish reading the chapter and ignore the frog. You won’t die of hunger and you’ve been thinking about losing weight anyway.”

The frontal lobe or prefrontal cortex is the area of ​​the brain where the primary impetus of the frog and the emotional suggestions of the shrew are controlled. This is the area of the controller and the one which, from an evolutionary point of view, still grows the fastest. We can refer to this area in more simple terms as our modern memory. This is the area which governs our attention and impulses. Here is where behavioral patterns are chosen and set into motion based upon specific situations. Here is also where the most suitable behavioral reactions are selected based on our current needs, motives, and experiences. Fundamentally, we make decisions based upon simple logic. The controller will attempt to suppress all suggestions which it deems momentarily inappropriate.

The stronger the frog and shrew impulses are, the more difficult it is to suppress them. In life-threatening situations in which the aggression pattern of the frog program assumes control, the stimulation factor is aggravated by the fear response. An additional factor is how differently the three regions react to external stimuli. The frog reacts after approximately 100 milliseconds, the shrew after 50 milliseconds, and the controller reacts to stimulus only after 300 milliseconds. The reason lies in the “length of the cable”. The frog is the first to receive input from the sensors, and can thus be seen as having the shortest cable. Our first reaction is always controlled by the frog (food, sex, and aggression) and can be suppressed by the controller under certain conditions, if history and reason are applied.

In order to understand how the controller functions, it is necessary to compare its performance capability – our conscious memory – with the performance capability of the subconscious frog and shrew brain areas. The frog and shrew brains operate in tandem and on a subconscious level, are able to process around 11 million bits per second; that number includes all consciously unperceived external impressions such as scents, sounds, movements, objects, and expressions, as well as various internal physical sensations, such as body position, pain, and so on.

In contrast, we have only a laughable 40 bits per second of serially operating conscious memory available. This puny bit of memory is equivalent to our attention span. If you are concentrating and focused right now while reading this book, then you are using ​​your entire 40 bits solely for this one activity, and are able to read attentively. If you are unable to continue concentrating, your focus will keep changing and your attention will jump from one thought to the next. After a few minutes, you might notice that you haven’t actually understood a single word of the chapter, because your controller was busy elsewhere. You were not concentrating. You can picture our attention span like the beam of a flashlight, the light in the darkness of our unconscious perception. Wherever the spotlight falls, that’s where our awareness is directed. The spotlight of the flashlight is nothing more than the small segment of all the perceptions that we can consciously perceive and identify.

It takes a lot of energy and a comparatively long time to activate our controller, otherwise known as our reason. Its task is to review the behavior suggestions made by the frog and the shrew and, if necessary, postpone or completely suppress them. This is achieved by comparing the contents of our previously saved folders, our conscious memories. In the light of this enormously complex process, it is not surprising that the controller is only able to do its job if it can operate at maximum power of capacity. We can look at it this way: If we are distracted and not focused, and cannot use 40 bits per second for a specific task, then it’s as if we were searching around in the dark wildly with our flashlights. This also means that we will not be able to successfully suppress the frog suggestions.

The result is that, in accordance with our frog, we start to become more aggressive, louder, more cynical, and more defensive, due to the fact that our social behavioral control is weakened. We react “unreasonably.” Who has not found himself saying things in the initial heat of anger, only to regret them shortly afterwards? When stressed, we are less tolerant and more defensive and aggressive towards our partners, children, colleagues, and employees. Psychologists refer to the trainable ability to suppress our immediate response by briefly waiting as impulse control or delayed gratification. Although this is a more energy-intensive form of decision making, it has proven to be much more rewarding in the long term. In this context, we need to train and strengthen our ability to concentrate, our ability to focus 40 bits per second on a single activity for as long as possible. We need to learn how to direct the beam of our flashlight. Now, you can probably imagine what kinds of problems we can run into at the office if we are not able to direct the beam. Ongoing distractions and interruptions at work, along with the need to be constantly accessible, create the perfect environment for us to practice directing our flashlight’s beam back and forth on different subjects as quickly as possible – a very efficient training camp, indeed. And one that only helps to optimize distractibility, not to further concentration. We can legitimately say that in light of the requirements of our modern working world, we are heirs to a totally undersized memory. Our beam is just too small. However, we will later see that, in certain situations, we can defuse the beam, defocus, and remain attentive.

A very good example for this comes from happiness research. One assembly line worker distinguished herself from her colleagues in that she was clearly more motivated to complete the monotonous work. Subjectively, her work day went by much faster and she rarely had to force herself to go to work the next day. From time to time, she was even able to experience a sense of anticipation.

Let’s apply what we have learned to find out why this particular assembly line worker was able to produce more dopamine compared with her colleagues, who worked on the same assembly line. Let’s look back at the shrew logic. We can only sustainably produce dopamine if we work hard and are able to promptly see discernible progress as proof that our efforts are worth doing. If this is the case, we are able to experience joyful anticipation, feel motivated, and are willing to continue to invest energy and, ultimately, believe that we can achieve the set goal.

A concrete example of a typical assembly line task is filling a box with pencils. Our worker can quickly recognize that she is able to fill a number of cartons with pencils during her shift. At 5 pm when the shift bell rings, she is able to see the tangible fruits of her labor and realize her achievement. Both she and her colleagues work under these same conditions, and yet she differs from the rest. If we examine the task more closely, we can see that one key factor in the production of dopamine is missing. The task is not challenging. How can we define a challenging task? A task that provides the right level of challenge makes us feel neither underchallenged nor overchallenged. It can be neither too easy nor too difficult. The example of the assembly line work presents the problem of becoming underchallenging in just a few short days. The work is learned quickly and becomes routine very fast. In this case, it is necessary to make the task more difficult through artificial means.

It’s not difficult to understand why. Monotonous tasks do not require our full attention, so we do not need to utilize 40 bits per second to carry them out. In such situations, something occurs that we also sometimes experience at the end of a very stressful day when we are trying to fall asleep: Once things quiet down in our heads, an angst-ridden list of worries enters our minds. We suddenly remember everything we are afraid of – social conflicts, financial worries, and unfinished business are on frequent rotation in our top ten charts of disturbing thoughts. That means that if we are not in the process of using our 40 bits per second to fully concentrate on a specific task, we are very susceptible to fear triggers that will cause us to think about all the problems in our lives. Coming back to our flashlight analogy, we can see that if we do not direct the focus of our beam on handling daily, routine stress, it is very likely that we will begin to be tormented by unpleasant thoughts and plagued by worry. Since unchallenging activities do not require us to use the full capacity of our 40 bits for a single task, it follows suit that assembly line workers tend to simultaneously think about something else while sorting pencils. They are not focused on their work, and as a result, they themselves obscure the visible results of their effort.

This does not necessarily mean that every time you are distracted, negative thoughts are going to be triggered. There needs to be a reason for that to happen. If we are somewhat relaxed and occupied with a specific task, our brain switches to an “offline mode” to a certain extent, and those parts of the controller specialized in solving external problems are switched off. The brain starts to concentrate on its own functions and activates parts of the brain responsible for rest and relaxation. I’ll elaborate further in chapter 2. If your work is monotonous and you are in a state of distraction, this means that less dopamine will be secreted and time will seem to pass very slowly.

What our motivated assembly line worker needs to do to remain motivated is obvious. She needs to use her full 40-bit per second processing power for sorting pencils. In other words, she needs to force her brain to focus on the task she is performing. She could do that by counting pencils and boxes and focusing on trying to break her own record. Through intrinsic motivation, she is able to aim her beam on the pencils. This strategy, the subject of countless studies, reveals the simple logic of our problem-solving apparatus. If we can’t find a challenge that we can focus on and promptly solve, we begin to think about whether life makes sense or not. There is a negative side effect of our controller’s capabilities – in a worst case scenario, it can cause us to fall into severe depression and develop suicidal thoughts. This has been observed in prisoners held in solitary confinement.

This is the point of convergence for two examples outlined in this book – the demotivated assembly line workers and the project manager, who is torn between the project itself and his line responsibility, tormented by permanent accessibility, distraction and constant interruption, and the pressure to complete his project. As we will see, the project manager’s situation is overwhelming. He can’t see any partial success, and can’t recognize reaching any milestones. This distinguishes the two from each other. The common denominator is reflected in the identical way their memory reacts to being overchallenged and underchallenged. In both cases, we can see that the 40-bit processing capacity is not being used to complete a task; in the one case, because the activity is too easy and does not require concentration, in the other case, because an overload of demands forces the memory to multitask.

Biologically, subliminal fear means an increased level of agitation. This, in turn, leads to easier distractibility. By permanently checking on our problems and worries, we are able to create a short-lived sense of security. In this operating mode, we tend to clearly and frequently switch from one task to another without any external disruptive factors.

In the following chapters, I intend to identify and explain the cause of a central problem often faced in our modern work environment. To put it simply, we are no longer able see an immediate result from our efforts, and therefore we produce less dopamine, lose our motivation, perceive work as being much more exhausting than it actually is, no longer believe that we can reach the goals that have been set, and often feel victimized, as though we were being controlled by others. At the same time, we have lost our ability to concentrate for longer periods of time, and to listen to others. Impatience, and in the worst case, attention deficit disorders, seem to be emerging as a global problem associated with our digital world – and not only in children.

In the following chapters, we will consider how we can best deal with the new requirements in a brain-compatible way, so that we can do justice to the logic of our heritage. Generally speaking, we don’t need to worry because our brain is able to adapt to any condition. However, we do need to consider what the consequences might be in terms of our health, our motivation, and our job performance.