Author: japineda

Jaime A. Pineda is Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. He joined the Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD as a founding faculty member in 1989. Here, he remained for the rest of his 33-year academic career, impacting and inspiring generations of undergraduate and graduate students to take on hard questions in the neurobiology of the human mind. He is the author of many widely cited papers in animal and human cognitive and systems neuroscience. He edited one academic book (Mirror Neuron Systems: The Role of Mirroring Processes in Social Cognition). This is a collection of research on the functional significance of mirror neurons that includes Professor Pineda’s work on autism. It is one of the most cited and downloaded books in the field. He is the author of The Social Impulse: The Evolution and Neuroscience of What Brings Us Together. For the last twenty years, he became interested in spiritual matters as a bridge to a fuller understanding of the mind. This led him to explore Zen Buddhism, train with a master teacher, and develop his creative side. He has published two books of poetry (Quieting of a Mind; Dawning of a New Mind) focusing on mind-brain relationships with an emphasis on spirituality, mysticism, environmentalism, and social activism. Most recently, he published his autobiography (Piercing the Cloud: Encountering the Real Me), the story of his journey and bridging of science and spirituality. In his creative endeavors, Professor Pineda explores how true seeing, hearing, feeling, and thinking can quiet the overactive monkey mind and how it allows silence to become the fountain of creative thought. He now shares these insights with others.

Waiting for Godot

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It’s what I imagine the playwright Samuel Beckett’s characters felt. Or, better yet, what God feels, while waiting patiently for someone to arrive. Waiting for anyone to hear the message, as He makes the birds sing, flowers blossom, the rain fall, the neighbor smile and say hello, and in infinite ways reaches out. The response: muted, silent.

A few weeks ago, I started this blog. Finding content was not the problem. I tackled the coronavirus, our anxious monkey mind, and our predictive brain. I even tried poetry. The response: crickets. My heavenly answer to this: Be patient. My Trumpian reply: Ingrates!

I’ve learned that the biggest hurdle preventing my voice from being heard over the roar of the Internet is leading the crowd to the blog site. They call it getting eyeballs! I still don’t know how that happens. At the moment, getting eyeballs seems gruesome and magical.  Although, I am learning about tags and categories and posting on social media, etc.  In the meantime, I sit and wait for Godot.

Our Predictive Brain

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An often-overlooked human skill is our capacity to forecast future outcomes. We are excellent at anticipating an event in a variety of ways. Look-ahead functions or anticipatory mechanisms occur in how we read sentences and interpret speech. They also exist in how we carry out movements, like walking, grasping an object, or riding a bicycle. With reading or listening to a conversation, for example, we anticipate the words that come next. This facilitates the dynamics of a dialogue. Neuroscience studies show that the cerebellum executes some of these predictive operations for both motor and speech actions. This implies that how we control muscles to execute a movement is similar to how we manipulate sounds to construct a sentence.

An important aspect of our predictive brain is its ability to correct errors. Error correction is necessary to optimize and smooth out behavior by minimizing the adverse effects of deviations or unexpected perturbations in the system. It’s part of the flexibility, adaptability, and neuroplasticity that makes our brain unique. However, because we can expand the time window of processing, from the immediate present to extended past and future, it can complicate predictions. The predictive accuracy is inversely related to the timing of the event. During the very brief intervals required for movement or language, we do nicely. Otherwise, we are not very good. Yet we are predisposed to try. The result is stress, fear, depression and the myriad other disorders that arise when our predictions fail.

The solution to these prediction failures is easy to understand but hard to implement. It is to focus on what our brains evolved to do well. That is, to handle present-moment or immediate contingencies. Large portions of brain power are dedicated to this kind of creative, moment-by-moment living. The phone rings and I answer it; the water on the stove starts boiling over and I turn the gas off; I am watching television and getting angry at the story of the immigrant child who died while crossing the river with his dad. Most of this activity falls below our level of awareness. Error processing, on the other hand, triggers conscious processing and interruptions by our rational mind that require a look into the distant past or into the far future. This can cause problems if our ego decides to interfere. It is best, then, to let our predictive brain do the job of the moment and leave awareness to deal with the past and future. In other words, zip up that egoic intellect.

I will talk about the role of nonconscious and conscious processing in terms of  present, past, and future thinking, as well as egoic thinking, in upcoming posts. Keep tuned!

Out of the Many, One

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The statistical models used to estimate the number of coronavirus infections, and resulting deaths, assumed that only about half of the U.S. population would follow the physical distancing guidelines. Surprisingly the vast majority of Americans took heed. As a consequence, the predicted number of deaths is projected to be about one-tenth of what the models predicted. The question is why? Why did so many fellow citizens follow what is essentially the opposite tendency that drives human social behavior? Why were Americans who value their independence and freedom so compliant at following the guidelines? How were we able to give up our treasured sports, entertainment, shopping, churches, and other activities that represent the essence of who we are?

One obvious answer is that we faced a life and death situation unlike any we’ve encountered in the recent past. Nothing focuses the mind as much as our imminent demise. A disease that is highly contagious, deadly, essentially everywhere, and for which we have no cure is terrifying. Undoubtedly, the coronavirus pandemic scared the bejesus out of us. A less obvious answer is that we actually learned lessons from other countries. Perhaps not so much from China, where it all started, but from Italy, which is more similar to our culture and was devastated. It was frightening to watch the Italian health system be overwhelmed with covid-19 cases and the accumulating death count.

But the least obvious explanation is that for one brief moment we recognized our shared humanity. In a blink of an eye we realized our true nature, that we are all connected and that what you do affects me and vice versa. While most of the other factors focused our mind on the problem, it was the realization of our common humanity that produced the promising results. And although it is painful to lose so many, in the end we remain focused and committed as one. This singular moment in our history made the traditional motto of the United States come to life: E pluribus unum –”Out of many, one.”

It is my hope this learned experience remains fresh in our minds for a long time. If it does, it has the potential to radically change us for the better.

Fetters of the Mind

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I feel not like a thousand chains
Around me, only a few,
Enough to hide the fears,
Enough to hold the tears.
 
I feel oppressed unable to express
The cries of pain, in vain.
The more I struggle to be free,
The more enslaved I be.
 
What must I do, dear God?
For time seems running short.
The shallow breath-
Is it a sign of death?
 
The key lies not in trying to undo
The fetters of the mind.
To understand the whys isn’t enough;
It only makes the pain so much more tough.
 
It takes a silent moment
To instruct that prisons
Built by active mind
Are simply not
When mind serene
Becomes.

Embracing Uncertainty Through Trust.

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The way my logical mind reacts to the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic reminds me of the trust I place on the Global Positioning System (GPS) on my smart phone. GPS is an amazing navigational program that uses at least 24 satellites, a receiver and algorithms to give location, velocity and time synchronization for air, sea and land travel. That means its navigational database and capabilities are a heck of a lot larger and better than mine. The relationship works well when I trust it to get me around, particularly to unfamiliar places. However, when a glitch occurs and I choose an unexpected wrong turn, I lose trust in the application.  More often than not, my ego interferes and judges that it is smarter and takes over. This leads to complications, getting turned around and lost. In the middle of this confusion, my anxious mind shows up and I start complaining and ranting. My persistence on following ego and not GPS leads to even more serious behaviors, such as arguing with my wife trying to justify my erratic choices. What gets me in trouble, then, is my rational mind, which thinks it is smarter than it really is. This isn’t any different when facing the uncertainty of a pandemic or any other life challenge.

The question is whom do I trust? My answer is to trust your instincts and intuitions. Our obsession with rational, deliberative thinking makes us unable or unwilling to let go and let our instincts and intuition be. Fear of lack of control associated with letting go reduces our trust. The tiny level of control that conscious, rational awareness provides is sufficient for us to cling to it. But I am talking about instincts and intuitions built on preparedness, on life experiences, on growing wisdom. Such trust provides a doorway to negotiate life’s obstacles in the face of enormous demands and uncertainties beyond the capacity of our rational mind. How do I begin? Times of uncertainty are actually good training ground to cultivate our intuitive and instinctual capacities. Here is one way:

EXERCISE:  How to Cultivate an Intuitive Mind

Allow Associative Thinking

Associative processing occurs when you allow your mind to “wander” and “free associate.” It can automatically link up seemingly unrelated ideas, thoughts, observations, sensory input, memory of existing knowledge with your intuitive subconscious or intuitive interface. Associative processing tends not to provide a direction or a goal. Curiosity drives it and is the basis for the good monkey mind.

  • Detach yourself from your thoughts and observe them from a distance
  • Observe without constraint and rationale
  • Permit and allow your mind to roam without purpose
  • Discard nothing that comes up
  • Note interesting ideas, write them
  • Keep roaming without direction and avoid judging those ideas that crop up
  • Increase your tolerance for ambiguity

The Monkey Mind

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For most of us, a happy, productive life means having an active, adaptable, energetic, curious, and creative mindset.  In the book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert writes that creative living is “living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”  She acknowledges a certain reality about the ever-present fear and assumes that circumstances, such as dealing with a pandemic, can push us in that direction. Despite our exceptional original mind, creative living stumbles and fear and anxiety can creep in. If this continues unimpeded, it reaches a point in which positive impulses turn more negative affecting how we manage life. It is then that original mind recedes, obscured by a bourgeoning, problematic shadow of itself. And as our life goes off the rails, we encounter monkey mind.

Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, identified our chattering intellect 2500 years ago as the singular psychological basis for human suffering. He used the term “kapicitta,” meaning monkey mind, to describe it. He identified the dilemma of the restless mind, diagnosed the source, and provided solutions. As a most gifted and insightful psychologist, his ideas are relevant for the uncertain modern life we live in. His concepts help us understand and deal with the anxious, fearful, unmanageable, ego-based thinking of monkey mind.

EXERCISE:  How to Cultivate Original Mind

Practice Mindfulness/Still Your Mind/Present-Moment Centering

Mindfulness is an important first step in dissolving monkey mind and cultivating original mind. It involves learning to be in the present moment. Mindfulness meditation reduces the activity of the chattering and hyperactive mind. Practice mindfulness to help still obsessive worrying, and when that happens, you can access your calm and creative nature.

·      Pick a time to practice mindfulness.
       (You need not sit since practice can occur anywhere and anytime).
·      Anchor your situational awareness to the present moment.
·      Be present by focusing and centering on your actions.
·      Attend to sensory experiences (sights, sounds, smells, etc.).
·      Attend to mental activity and label the dominant opinions.
·      Observe these thoughts without judging them.

Unencumbered Original Mind

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When original mind, the mind we have at birth, is unencumbered and allowed to flourish, it becomes an active, adaptable, dynamic, inquisitive, and inventive powerhouse. Tragedy encumbers it, as it did for Jean-Dominique Bauby, author of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly who suffered from locked-in syndrome, yet still overcame his circumstances. William James, founder of American Psychology, conceived of brain-mind as “endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity.” Plasticity or neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change itself because of experience. It means that seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, feeling, and thinking affects us by altering the wiring connecting sensory experiences to emotions and actions.  As water takes the mold of the container we pour it into, a developing intellect takes the mold dictated by its surrounding. An environment rich with music, laughter, conversation, love, toys, and other people will produce a healthy, curious, energetic brain-mind. An impoverished situation where these elements are missing will not.  Neuroplasticity means the brain develops and programs the skills it needs to adapt to the specific habitat, and experiences the loss of skills unnecessary for that habitat.  This malleability and adaptability makes us different from computers, whose hardware is unchangeable.

We cultivate an unencumbered original mind by encouraging curiosity.

Be like a child. Encourage your curiosity about everything. Ask questions. Focus on a dilemma. Use your creative imagination to visualize the issue. Write the hunches, insights, instincts, answers to the queries your mind conjures up. Writing strengthens the connection to your intellect and intuition.

Try this exercise: As you go to work or to the store, pay attention and note new details you had not observed before. Try to see something new every day on the same route.  Attend to the variety of colors, textures, forms you encounter.

Reducing Uncertainty in a Chaotic World

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In a world where confusion is an unavoidable aspect of being human, the coronavirus pandemic has increased chaos. And changed levels of uncertainty from moderate to extreme. This is a dangerous state from which to live, since high uncertainty inhibits our rational mind. It also dampens other means in our psychological toolbox that we count on—our instinct and intuition. Scientists tell us that instinct and intuition are often the only practical method for assessing uncertainty.  We want to know the future and minimize not-knowing. But our brains have not developed the capabilities or natural means to understand and determine probabilities. This is true of complex events such how this pandemic will affect us; or how our loved one will respond to the needed medical intervention. We don’t waste a lot of time and effort figuring this out because it is beyond our capability. Rather, we decide based on tendencies and beliefs about the likelihood of uncertain events.

Half a century ago, Kahneman and Tversky, two Israeli psychologists, showed that humans evolved strategies called heuristics. These strategies are economical and work well under most cases at predicting the immediate future. We use heuristics to form judgments, decide, and find solutions to complicated problems. They are the best guesses made under the circumstances. And distinct strategies are used to arrive at these judgments. One is focusing on the most important aspect of a problem. Another is basing responses on previous experiences. Heuristics are imperfect means to solve issues or make predictions, but good enough to reach a solution or decision quickly. These convenient and evolved strategies, however, lead to severe and systematic biases and errors. This is because they have a built-in trade-off between accuracy and effort.  Nature designed them to maximize speed of decision making with the least amount of effort. Unfortunately, they suffer in terms of accuracy.

Accuracy, however, is subjective, and what improves reliability is confidence and trust. We need to have confidence in life, God, Buddha nature, the government, anything that is greater than ourself. When uncertainty increases, trust decreases. And vice versa. The more we trust, the less the uncertainty, and the greater the accuracy. The key is to count on something or someone that is reliable. At this moment, trust in government, and maybe even medicine, teeters as the uncertainty grows. But it is important to trust in something. In the next few postings, I plan to share exercises to help cultivate trust in something and reduce uncertainty. Here is one to get started:

EXERCISE:  How to Cultivate an Intuitive Mind

Slow Down and Listen to Your Inner Voice
Learn to recognize “intuition.” Pay attention to your conscience, small inner voice, instincts, insights, and hunches. Before you can recognize your intuition, be able to hear/feel it amid the loudness and distractions of life. To do that, it’s important to first slow down and listen. Take time away from your normal routine. Spend time outdoors, or in an isolated place, with few distractions to practice this exercise.

Take a brief walk in a park, forest, or the beach.  Practice deep breathing and calm down the ongoing chatter of your mind. Imagine that your mind is like listening to noise caused by multiple radio stations playing all at once. You need to turn down the volume; to listen to the one station that is relevant and are searching for—your intuitive channel.

A Sociocultural Singularity?

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The coronavirus pandemic is the extraordinary moment we are experiencing in 2020. As I listen to the news of the coronavirus or COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 there is anxiety and uncertainty in the air. The slow crawl of the coronavirus, from East to the West, is bringing countries and societies to their knees. Economies are grinding to a halt. The frenzied activities of humanity are slowing to a remarkable crawl. The microorganism is powerful enough to devastate the earth’s population, so we shelter in place and isolate ourselves, hoping it will pass by. Paradoxically, the possibility of devastation is offering us a gift – it has forced us to pause and reflect.

Is it a coincidence that amid human-caused climate change, the ultimate challenge facing the earth, we experience the explosion of a pandemic directed at the ones responsible for climate change? From a religious context, some might view it as God’s response, in the form of a plague, to save the Earth. The punishment released on mankind for forsaking their God recalls the flood of Noah. In the realm of science, the explanation is simpler but equally devastating. From that angle, the interpretation relies more on the notion we have crossed a threshold in the fine biological balance established with other species on the planet. Encroachment by humans on territories inhabited by bats, which carry potential for diseases for which we lack immunity, has opened a Pandora’s box. It is an occasion to reflect.

I wish and pray that we see this pandemic as an opportunity to reconsider and reevaluate what our human activity is imposing on our mother planet.

An Exploration of Brain and Mind

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There are several reasons for starting a blog. First, as a scientist, I want to share ideas and observations as they relate to brain and mind. Second, I want to share my writing, which to date involves an autobiography, books of poetry, and a prescriptive nonfiction book on the anxious, monkey mind. Organizing my life on paper to complete the autobiography was satisfying, for the process allowed me to detect patterns in a life, which like all lives make a messy set of data points. Searching for patterns in this immense array of events is why I went into scientific research as a career. Second, as a teacher, I want to help others. I see in my writing an opportunity to share the personal, scientific, and spiritual lessons learned over a lifetime. I hope you enjoy these offerings.