So Dietrich started to wonder how the brain was eliminating this complexity—which is when it dawned on him: the brain wasn’t eliminating complexity, it was eliminating the very structures that created this complexity. “We had it backward,” he says. “In flow, parts of the PFC aren’t becoming hyperactive; parts of it are temporarily deactivating. It’s an efficiency exchange. We’re trading energy usually used for higher cognitive functions for heightened attention and awareness.”
