Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind

by Joe Dispenza

By 1868, two decades after the accident, Dr. Harlow was ready to accept the surprising message inherent in Gage’s altered personality, that the frontal lobe is linked with the personality. The incident and its aftermath began the search for a “self ” in the brain that has to do with how we personally regulate our behavior, control our impulses, make complicated choices, and plan our future. All these attributes go well beyond the basic functions of memory, motor and speech processing, and animal reflexes.

Patients who underwent these “treatments” exhibited many common traits. Because the aftereffects of the frontal lobotomy suggest just how momentous a role the healthy, functional frontal lobe plays in our lives, I will describe the outcome of these lobotomies in some detail. The first thing their doctors noticed was that each patient became markedly placid, lazy, and lethargic, and showed no interest in their surroundings. There was also a distinct loss of initiative, and these patients became uninspired. As well, they displayed a significant desire for sameness. Most subjects became deeply attached to routine behavior. In fact, they became predictable,

Almost every lobotomized frontal lobe patient demonstrated an inability to focus on single-minded tasks. They would start an activity or initiate a speech pattern, and then become completely distracted and never finish what they started. Many would become sidetracked from an activity by any trivial event in their surroundings. These patients also failed to gain meaning out of situations, which signified that they could not learn or memorize any new information. They could not comprehend intricate actions or ideas. All their complex behavior patterns were replaced by simpler, more predictable ones. Projecting into the future was also beyond their ability. They had no future goals—not even short-term ones—since they were unable to make plans and carry them out. Certainly, these people were unable to adapt to new situations.

Many lobotomized patients also became child-like and immature. They lacked social constraints and any sense of responsibility. They lacked control over their immediate impulses. Several patients would break out in fits of bad temper over insignificant situations. Childish tantrums and pouting were extremely common. They often repeated the same phrases of speech. Their communication skills declined more and more, over time, until they were able to emit only grunts and noises. Eventually, lobotomized patients lost their ability to take care of themselves, use language, and recognize objects, and they could not exhibit any signs of critical judgment. They experienced a consistent cognitive decline until their faculties of “self” collapsed. Finally, they became lost in a narrow, primitive world of almost animal-like behavior.

Damage to the frontal lobe causes human beings to have one or more of the following symptoms. • We tend to become lazy, lethargic, and uninspired. • We desire sameness or routine. • We have difficulty focusing on single-minded tasks; we start projects or endeavors such as diet or exercise routines, and never follow through. • We fail to gain meaning out of situations. In other words, we hardly ever learn anything new from situations, so that we can modify our actions to produce a different outcome. • We seem to have emotional outbursts when our routine world is disrupted. • We do not project into the future by making any plans.

Como un adicto

Recent studies in brain scan technology have shown that the less activity in the frontal lobe, the greater the tendency toward impulsively overemotional behavior.

the frontal lobe is responsible for the conscious, willful, purposeful, intentional choices and actions that we undertake countless times each day. It is the home of the “true self.”

If we cannot think beyond how we emotionally feel, then we are living according to what the environment dictates to our body. Rather than truly thinking, innovating, and creating, we merely fire the synaptic memories in other areas of our brain from our genetic or personal past; we instigate the same repetitive chemical reactions that have us living in survival mode.

el peligro de no pensar

What distinguishes us from all other species of animals is the size of the frontal lobe relative to the rest of the neocortex. In cats, the frontal lobe makes up 3.5 percent of their higher brain’s anatomy. The frontal lobe of a dog comprises seven percent of the total new brain. In chimpanzees, and in other smaller primates like the gibbon and the macaque, the proportion of the frontal lobe to the rest of the cortex is about 11 to 17 percent. In humans, however, the frontal lobe makes up 30 to 40 percent of the total volume of the neocortex.

We now know that the frontal lobe oversees almost all the brain’s activities. It is our seat of inspiration, what mystics have called the crown. Although they could not have known as much about the frontal lobe as we do today, ancient cultures, when crowning a great king, presented him with gold and jewels over this part of the brain, symbolizing that he had the mind to lead a nation. A peacemaker in times past would be crowned with a laurel wreath, placed over the frontal lobe to acknowledge his ability to resolve differences and to see through chaos. Similarly, when an athlete was celebrated with a laurel wreath over his forehead, this signified his mastery over his body and the environment. Great initiates and advanced civilizations in ancient times knew that the jewel worn in the middle of one’s forehead was there not to accentuate the face, but to acknowledge the power of the brain, specifically the frontal lobe. For centuries, the frontal lobe has been recognized as the most elevated area of the human brain.8

Throne of the True Self From a scientific standpoint, the frontal lobe (also called the prefrontal cortex) can be considered the seat of power in human beings. The frontal lobe is capable of an amazing array of tasks, because it is the part of the brain most densely interconnected to all other distinct functional areas of the brain.9 It has direct connections to the cerebellum, all the other parts of the neocortex, the midbrain, the basal ganglia, the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, the amygdala, and even the brain stem nuclei.

There is a very strong correlation between learning new things and blood flow to the frontal lobe. Scientists performing functional scans in controlled experiments have noticed that both frontal lobes were most active when the task was novel or new.

Crece El cerebro al aprender cosas nuevas

According to some of the latest research, scientists have demonstrated that the brain processes about 400 billion bits of information every second. Usually, however, we are conscious of only about 2,000 of those bits of data.

Although the brain processes 400 billion bits of data every second, the frontal lobe enables us to actively select what data we choose to put our awareness on.

What is also wonderful about the frontal lobe is that it inhibits random behavior (through a process called impulse control), so that our every thought doesn’t cause us to act without thinking about the consequences. One of the reasons teenagers are so impulsive is that the frontal lobe takes time to develop fully.

This power of intention is what we most admire about our heroes.

When we are clear about what we want, the frontal lobe forbids anything from distracting us from our purpose and intent.

La distraccion existe por no tener claro que queremos

So, what happens to our ability to focus when we activate the frontal lobe? When we are concentrating, paying attention, or learning with great intent and complete focus, the frontal lobe prevents our brain from wandering off any chosen path of activity. To keep our mind from being distracted, the frontal lobe disregards signals from the body related to feeling emotions and sensing the environment. Just as important, our frontal lobe “lowers the volume,” restraining those regions of the brain that handle sensory as well as motor information. It also quiets down the motor cortex so that when we are paying attention or focusing, we tend to get very still. That’s because the motor functions to that part of the brain get slowed down or turned off; we actually move into a state of trance, and the body follows. There is no longer any mind in the body’s movement centers of the motor cortex. When the sensory circuits cool off, it is as if we are no longer sensing or feeling the environment or the body, because there is no mind being processed in the feeling area of the cortex.

Even the emotional centers are cooled off in the limbic brain. As a result, what we are thinking about or focusing on will become more real to us than the external world. As those neural networks are shut off by the frontal lobe, we no longer process any level of mind or awareness in that part of the brain and we, therefore, are no longer conscious of the body, the environment, and even time.

De ahi la importancia de la meditacion

In the case of a person who is having an explosive emotional response to a minor upset, the signals his body is sending to him are so loud and so persistent that the frontal lobe can’t hold a greater ideal firmly in focus; chemicals are rampaging through the body and the brain, and the autonomic nervous system has seized control in order to meet the body’s demands.

The orientation association center is involved in locating us in time and space—establishing how our body is physically oriented in space, and delineating for us where our body begins and ends. With activity quieted in that area, itʹs no wonder people experience a sense of ʺonenessʺ with the universe. The brainʹs symphony leader, while being involved in active focused concentration, quiets the center that defines the bodyʹs boundaries,

The frontal lobe has also suspended our sense of being located in a particular time and space. So there we are, lacking a boundary between ourselves and others and the environment, with no sense of time or space, no sense of self, and as Dr. Newberg puts it, we begin to ʺperceive the self as endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything.ʺ

some experts also state that ADD is caused from a lack of the proper social structuring during childhood development.

Many of the symptoms of ADD are almost the same as in individuals with frontal lobe damage from surgery or injury: short attention span, difficulty learning from experiences, poor organizational skills, a tendency to be easily distracted, low level of planning skills, an inability to focus on tasks and finish them, lack of control over actions, and a tendency to be so fixed in their opinions and actions that they will not compromise their behaviors, even if they know that those behaviors do not serve them.

The debate surrounding just how truly free we are is beyond the scope of this chapter, but the relationship between the frontal lobe and our freewilled choices is an intimate one. The frontal lobe allows us to make conscious choices, not based on memory but based on the ability to choose what we want to choose. If we make choices based on memory, we aren’t employing the frontal lobe to a great degree. But when we have to think and make choices that are outside of our memory (the “box” of what we know), the frontal lobe is in its heightened state. Researchers have conducted experiments showing that the frontal lobe is most active during a freewilled kind of decision-making. The choices these subjects made do not involve clear right or wrong answers, but rather, ambiguous situations in which the choice is made based on what the subjects would enjoy the most.

perhaps advertising is just a way of repetitively encoding the memory of a product into our brain so permanently that when a situation arises in which we need to take action, we remember the most immediate neurological pattern that meets our need. In that case, no free will is involved. Instead, we’re simply responding to a stimulus from a limited assortment of preprogrammed patterns. It takes effort to think and to contemplate new possibilities that exist beyond right and wrong and beyond known and unknown choices, and that means we have to interrupt the programs that are hardwired in our brain.

The Frontal Lobe: On or Off? The following is a simplified list of what we can do or be when our frontal lobe is activated. • Intentional awareness and long attention span • Contemplation of possibilities, acting on them • Decisiveness • Clarity • Joy • Usable skills • Adaptability • Ability to learn from mistakes and do things differently the next time • Ability to plan a future and stick to projected plan • Focus • Daily review of options • Strengthened sense of self • Ability to take action toward goals • Disciplined behavior • Ability to build greater options from prior experiences • Ability to hold an ideal independent of external circumstances • Ability to make dreams, goals, and intents more real than external world and feedback of body • Concentration to the exclusion of everything else • Ability to stay present with the self and internal thoughts • Proactiveness • Individuality Now, here’s a list of what we can do or be when our frontal lobe is not functioning fully. • Listless and lazy • Uninspired and unmotivated, with no initiative • Desirous of sameness, routine, and predictability • Unwilling to learn • Able to be easily distracted • Unable to make future plans • Behaving in ways that never match desires • Unable to complete actions and tasks • Reactive • Mentally rigid, disliking change • Fixated on the same negative thoughts • Unable to listen well • Disorganized • Impulsive • Overly emotional • Forgetful • Unable to see options • Follower

For too long, we have labored under the assumption that we have made freewilled decisions about our identity and our future. Now, I hope I have made my case that, most of the time, we aren’t exercising our free will at all. We have simply been selecting from a prescripted menu of choices based on our past. We haven’t yet begun to utilize our free will, and we haven’t taken full advantage of the gift that is our frontal lobe.

However, just because those qualities aren’t fully present in our life doesn’t mean we don’t possess the skills and can’t refine them. We simply need to turn down the volume of noise that interferes with our ability to focus our concentration.

I use the term mental rehearsal to describe how we can best employ our frontal lobe and take advantage of its advanced faculties to make significant changes in our life. When we rehearse, we have a more focused and purposeful intent. We don’t simply run through a routine set of exercises; we perform as if the occasion were a concert. That’s the key difference in the mind. A rehearsal is supposed to replicate the experience of the actual doing of the thing. In this case, mentally rehearsing and the actual doing are one and the same. Each time we initiate some action, engage in a behavior, perform a skill, express an emotion, or make a change in our attitude, we should get better. That’s why we rehearse—so that we can get better and so that the next time we perform that experience, it becomes easier for us to do it.

The idea that we can change our brain just by thinking has enormous implications for affecting any kind of change in our life. Mental rehearsal gives us the ability to create a new level of mind without doing anything physical other than thinking.

The next steps are equally easy: We have to create an ideal in our head of what we want to rehearse. We have to ask the right kind of self-reflective questions. Who do I want to be? What do I have to change about myself to get there? Whom do I know or what resources can I find to help me develop this working model in my mind?

When we are not using the frontal lobe at its functional capacity, and especially when we are not using it at all, survival-oriented questions inundate us. When am I going to eat? How soon before I can go to bed? Why are my lips so dry? When did I last drink something? What do I look like and am I accepted by this person?

Similarly, in my mind, contemplation is more discursive; it wanders farther afield than what we traditionally think of as an act of intense focus on a precise thought, idea, or concept. When we start the mental rehearsal process, we may have a precise idea in mind, but when we contemplate it, we also start to ask ourselves those “what if ” and “what would it be like” kinds of questions. “What if I decided that from now on, I was going to be a more evolved person?” “What would my life look like if I could be more enthusiastic?” “What do I already know or what have I just learned that I can apply in the next moment so I can do it better next time?” When we contemplate those questions, we start out in speculation—and that’s a good thing, because it begins the process. The reason it is so good is that speculation means we are posing possibilities and not looking for absolute, right-or-wrong, black-or-white, yes-or-no, dualistic kinds of answers.

Consequently, our complete attention and focus allows the frontal lobe to mentally hold whatever images we choose, without the interruption of any other associative neural nets. That’s why mental rehearsal requires us to separate ourselves from distractions, and should be done when we are prepared and able to devote our full attention to the concepts we have chosen to make real in our life.

At the end of the study, the scientists compared their findings. The first set of participants had their finger strength tested against the control group. A nobrainer, right? Of course, the group that did the actual exercises exhibited 30 percent greater finger strength than those in the control group. We all know that if we put a load on a muscle and do so repeatedly, we are going to increase the strength of that muscle. What we probably wouldn’t anticipate is that the group who mentally rehearsed the exercises demonstrated a 22 percent increase in muscle strength, simply by doing the exercises with their minds. The mind, then, produced a quantifiable physical effect on the body.

Consciously activating the brain produces a level of mind with intentional energy or frequency that carries a message to the body. It produces measurable effects in the tissues, and it also creates new, more intricate neural nets in the brain—and we don’t have to lift a finger to create them.

The brain chemistry of love is completely different from the chemistry that we produce in survival mode.

If we love the concept of our new self from the start, love is the only emotion we can associate it with, because we have yet to experience that new self. Those experiences are yet to come, and they are an important part of evolving our brain to the highest degree possible. The side effect of this creative process is joy.

John’s manipulation of his environment demonstrates that it is essential, in order to use mental rehearsal effectively, that we get away from the usual people, places, things, times, and events that make up so much of our daily routine and thoughts. One random interaction with any one of these distractions can initiate automatic associative thinking. That is one reason why travel often enables us to think more clearly about situations that have developed in our life, to plot our future more clearly, to arrive at decisions more easily, and to plan our next steps more fluidly. We are out of our usual element and all the associations we have with it. When we abandon our typical, predictable world, the environment will no longer trigger us to activate the circuits of our automatic, routine, reactive responses. Mental rehearsal can be like taking a trip, if we alter our environment in some way so that we have no previous associations with it or with the mental state we bring into the new environment.

Through mental rehearsal, for instance, we can place an image in our frontal lobe of how we will respond with compassion the next time our sister, who has complained about her ne’er-do-well husband for the last 15 years, comes to us with the same laundry list of complaints. In creating a vision of that new response, we will not be activating those routine circuits that have us angry and stonewalling her with silence.

The frontal lobe allows us to modify our existing circuits to become a new individual. The only thing it takes to become a more compassionate person—or to create any new attribute we desire—is focused concentration, will, knowledge, and understanding.

That is how Malcolm X reformed himself from being a criminal to becoming a revered civil rights leader. We are capable of consciously reinventing ourselves as a new individual by using some of the same tools we used to unconsciously form our “old” self. These tools include understanding the Laws of Association and Repetition, firing new sequences and patterns based on knowledge and experience, learning to quiet the internal chattering that results from a nearly obsessive focus on the external environment, and attending to the resultant emotional state we’ve become addicted to; they all put to use our greatest gift—the frontal lobe.

Starting Early To truly reinvent, revise, and reconceptualize ourselves, we have to use the process of mental rehearsal to fire those new circuits on a daily basis and at every opportunity. If we rehearse every day, especially first thing in the morning, we walk out of the house with those circuits already warmed up. Since we’ve already been that new person in our mind—we are already in that mindset—it’s a lot easier to be that person when we encounter a situation that challenges that new concept.

There is a second type of memory system called implicit or procedural memories. Implicit memories are associated with habits, skills, emotional reactions, reflexes, conditioning, stimulus-response mechanisms, associatively learned memories, and hardwired behaviors that we can demonstrate easily, without much conscious awareness. These are also termed nondeclarative memories, because they are abilities that we do not necessarily need to declare, but that we repeatedly demonstrate without much conscious effort or will. Implicit memories are intimately connected to the abilities that reside at a subconscious level. We’ve done these things so many times, we don’t have to think about them anymore. We use implicit memories all the time, but we do so without being consciously aware of them. Implicit memories are thoughts that not only stay in the brain, but thoughts that stay in the body as well as the brain. In other words, the body has become the mind.

We learned with episodic memories that knowledge is the forerunner to experience. When we apply knowledge or personalize information, we have to modify our behavior in order to create a new experience.

The cerebellum has no conscious centers; it does, however, have memory storage. Its essential purpose is to demonstrate what the brain is thinking: to memorize the plan the neocortex has formulated and put that plan into action without actively involving too much of the neocortex in the operation itself. When we can take knowledge and practice it, coordinate it, memorize it, and integrate it into our body until we can automatically remember it, the cerebellum now has taken on the memory. At this point, the neocortex serves as a kind of messenger, signaling the cerebellum by a thought to start the activity that the cerebellum already knows and remembers.

First, think of learning knowledge in the form of semantic memory as a way to declare consciously that we have learned that information. When our conscious awareness activates those newly formed circuits in the neocortex, we are reminded of what we learned; we can declare that we know this information, because we have embraced it in the form of a memory. Knowledge involves our “thinking” or our intellect. We also said that knowledge paves the way for a new experience. To apply knowledge, we have to modify our habitual behavior to create a new experience. Experience, then, is our second type of declarative memory. If learning knowledge is thinking, then having the experience is “doing.” To firmly establish a long-term memory, whatever we want to remember must have a high emotional quotient, or involve repeated conscious experiences or recitation of an idea.

In a sense, when we become an expert in any particular area—when we possess a great deal of knowledge about a subject, have received significant instruction in that area, and have had plenty of experiences to provide us with feedback—we move from thinking to doing to being. When we possess sufficient knowledge and experience, when we can recall our short-term and long-term memories to a significant degree and with unconscious ease, then we have progressed to the point of being. This is when we can say “I am”—whether that means, “I am an art historian,” “I am a very patient person,” “I am wealthy,” or “I am a surfer.”

Entonces pendar y hacer convierten al ser

Learning knowledge is thinking; applying knowledge is doing and experiencing. Being able to mindfully repeat the experience is the wisdom of being.