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January 2 - January 17, 2022
digital distractions claim another kind of victim: basic human skills like empathy and social presence.
The symbolic meaning of eye contact, of putting aside what we are doing to connect, lies in the respect, care, even love it indicates. A lack of attention to those around us sends a message of indifference. Such social norms for attention to the people we are with have silently, inexorably shifted.
the brain does not “multitask” but rather switches rapidly from one task (my work) to others (all those funny videos, friends’ updates, urgent texts . . . ).12 Attention tasks don’t really go on in parallel, as “multitasking” implies; instead they demand rapid switching from one thing to the other. And following every such switch, when our attention returns to the original task, its strength has been appreciably diminished. It can take several minutes to ramp up once again to full concentration.
Heavy multitaskers, the Stanford group discovered, are more easily distracted in general. And when multitaskers do try to focus on that one thing they have to get done, their brains activate many more areas than just those relevant to the task at hand—a
The good news for multitaskers: cognitive control can be strengthened.
Just three ten-minute sessions of breath counting was enough to appreciably increase their attention skills on a battery of tests.
mindfulness also improved working memory—the holding in mind of information so it can transfer into long-term memory. Attention is crucial for working memory; if we aren’t paying attention, those digits won’t register in the first place.
better impulse inhibition went along with a self-reported uptick in emotional well-being.
When we did our first vipassana courses in India, we found ourselves immersed hour after hour in noting the comings and goings of our own mind, cultivating stability by simply noticing rather than following where those thoughts, impulses, desires, or feelings would have us go.
In meta-awareness it does not matter what we focus our attention on, but rather that we recognize awareness itself.
“That which is aware of sadness is not sad,” observes philosopher Sam Harris. “That which is aware of fear is not fearful. The moment I am lost in thought, however, I’m as confused as anyone else.”
There are two varieties of experience: the “mere awareness” of a thing, which our ordinary consciousness gives us, versus knowing you are aware of that thing—recognizing awareness itself, without judgment or other emotional reactions.
Our hunch would be that pushing a neural system like attention in a lasting way requires not just these short trainings and continued daily practice, but also intensive booster sessions,
Meditation, at its root, retrains attention, and different types boost varying aspects of attention. MBSR strengthens selective attention, while long-term vipassana practice enhances this even more.
Suddenly, what had been pain disappeared into a collection of sensations—tingling, burning, pressure—but his knee no longer hurt. The “pain” dissolved into waves of vibrations without a trace of emotional reactivity.
What went missing was just as critical: the psychological resistance to, and negative feelings about, those sensations. The pain had not vanished, but Richie had changed his relationship to it.
We live in a world our minds build rather than actually perceiving the endless details of what is happening.
Richie saw that if we actually paid attention in the right way to the nature of our experience, it would change dramatically.
the brain makes up only 2 percent of the body’s mass, it consumes about 20 percent of the body’s metabolic energy as measured by its oxygen usage, and that rate of oxygen consumption remains more or less constant no matter what we are doing—including nothing at all.
Raichle identified a swath of areas, mainly the mPFC (short for midline of the prefrontal cortex) and the PCC (postcingulate cortex), a node connecting to the limbic system. He dubbed this circuitry the brain’s “default mode network.”1 While the brain engages in an active task, whether math or meditating, the default areas calm down
In short, our mind wanders mostly to something about ourselves—my thoughts, my emotions, my relationships, who liked my new post on my Facebook page—all the minutiae of our life story. By framing every event in how it impacts ourselves, the default mode makes each of us the center of the universe as we know it.
Our default mode continually rescripts a movie where each of us stars, replaying particularly favorite or upsetting scenes over and over. The default mode turns on while we chill out, not doing anything that requires focus and effort;
“a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” This self-system mulls over our life—especially the problems we face, the difficulties in our relationships, our worries and anxieties. Because the self ruminates on what’s bothering us, we feel relieved when we can turn it off.
When we become lost in thoughts during meditation, we’ve fallen into the default mode and its wandering mind. A basic instruction in almost all forms of meditation urges us to notice when our mind has wandered and then return our focus to the chosen target,
the connection between the dorsolateral PFC and the default mode—a connection found to be stronger in long-term meditators than in beginners.3 The stronger this connection, the more likely regulatory circuits in the prefrontal cortex inhibit the default areas, quieting the monkey mind—the incessant self-focused chatter that so often fills our minds when nothing else is pressing.
While most ways to relieve us from the burden of self are temporary, meditation paths aim to make that relief an ongoing fact of life—a lasting trait.
And each path, in its particular terms, sees lightening our sense of self as the key to such inner freedom.
Richie’s hour of utter stillness offers a glimpse of how our ordinary “self” can reduce to an optical illusion of the mind. As this keen observation gains strength, at some point our very sense of a solid self breaks down.
one of the main goals of all spiritual practice: lightening the system that builds our feelings of I, me, and mine.
Meditative traditions of all kinds share one goal: letting go of the constant grasping—the “stickiness” of our thoughts, emotions, and impulses—that guides us through our days and lives.
With this insight we don’t have to believe our thoughts; instead of following them down some track, we can let them go.
The stuff of our lives becomes less “sticky” as we shift into a less attached relationship toward all that. At the higher reaches of practice, mind training lessens the activity of our “self.” “Me” and “mine” lose their self-hypnotic power; our concerns become less burdensome.
in this mindfulness course they learned that if you are lost in some personal melodrama (a favorite theme of the default mode), you can voluntarily drop it—you can name it, or shift your attention to watching your breath or to bare awareness of the present moment. All of these are active interventions, efforts to quiet the monkey mind.
Novices in meditation, this suggests, keep their mind from wandering by activating neural wiring that can quiet the default area.
a “minimal self” that can simply notice the itch rather than bring it into our story line, my itch.
Having such meta-awareness allows us to monitor our thoughts, feelings, and actions; to manage them as we like; and to inquire into their dynamics.
Our sense of self gets woven in an ongoing personal narrative that threads together disparate parts of our life into a coherent story line. This narrator resides mainly in the default mode
The seasoned meditators in the Brewer study had the same strong connection between the control circuit and the default mode seen in beginners, but in addition had less activation within the default mode areas themselves.
these meditators intentionally train to be as mindful in their daily lives as during meditation sessions.
Richie’s group found that meditators who had an average 7,500 lifetime hours, compared to people their own age, had decreased gray matter volume in a key region: the nucleus accumbens.
the nucleus accumbens plays a large role in the brain’s “reward” circuits, a source of pleasurable feelings in life. But this is also a key area for “stickiness,” our emotional attachments, and addictions—in short, what ensnares us.
Meditation texts describe long-term practitioners achieving an ongoing compassion and bliss, but with “emptiness,” in the sense of no attachment.
if we let go of grasping, “we become more open to our own experience, and to other people.
“Great souls,” he added, “seem to embody the ability to engage suffering and handle it without collapse. Letting go of grasping is liberating, creating a moral axis for action and compassion.”
Later, though, whatever thoughts come to mind are like a thief entering an empty house: there’s nothing to do, so they just leave.
Cognitive neuroscience tells us this shift to effortlessness marks a neural transition in habit mastery: the prefrontal areas no longer make an effort to do the work, as the basal ganglia lower in the brain can take over—a
In the scientific study of any skill that people practice, from dentistry to chess, when it comes to sorting out the duffers from the pros, lifetime hours of practice are gold.
the brains of those with the most hours of meditation showed little effort in keeping their focus one-pointed, even despite compelling distractions, while those with fewer lifetime hours put in more effort.
The rule of thumb: the brain of a novice works hard while that of the expert expends little energy.
The same sorts of thoughts can arise in your mind, but they are lighter: not so compelling, with less emotional oomph, and so float away more easily.
