Brain Science: Neuroscience, Behavior

Latest Episodes:

Coping skills and strategies Oct 21, 2019

Show notes

Mireille and Adam discuss coping skills and strategies to use when managing the emotions and struggles of everyday life. We talk through some common ways people manage their emotions, strategies for emotional coping, as well as problem solving coping.

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Featuring:

Mireille Reece, PsyD – LinkedIn
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

We discussed the concept of SMART goals — they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and based on a specific time frame.

We discussed the concept of HALT. Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? If so, coping will invariably be different, regardless of your age.

We also discussed several examples of emotional coping strategies:

Name it to tame it
Grounding - Our senses are real-time, so orienting yourself to what you can see, smell, taste, touch, or hear will give you a realistic view of your circumstances and environment.
Deep breathing
Meditation - Check out Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Visualization
Ice — Allow a small ice cube to melt in your hand. It’s a distraction and a file for tolerating the “wave” of emotion.
Music — Listening to music or singing (various parts of the brain are involved).
Front-loading — Doing things in a certain way to conserve energy to allocate to other things.
Graduated exposure vs. Flooding

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Humans and habits Sep 27, 2019

Show notes

Mireille and Adam explore the habit loop, the role of environment as a cue, behavior change, the role of dopamine, willpower as a finite resource, and the impact of social influences on habits.

As with any change, we need to collect data. Instead of trying to change a habit right away, treat yourself like a scientist in a data gathering stage and experiment with different rewards to better understand your habit loops. Making and breaking a habit is different for everyone.

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Featuring:

Mireille Reece, PsyD – LinkedIn
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Key takeaways:

Take stock of your resources
Look at the context of your own life
How does this benefit myself and my team/my board?
Accountability — who’s on your team?

Links:

The habit loop
The meaning of Gracious
MIT study on why habits are hard to make and break

Book recommendations:

The Power of Habit
Atomic Habits
Essentialism - The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown (Adam’s favorite chapter is “Protect the asset”)

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We're designed for relationship Aug 21, 2019

Show notes

Mireille and Adam explore the importance of relationships and the concept of attachment. We often think of ourselves as individuals, but our lives are spent embedded within the context of social relationships. These relationships influence and shape our brains, which deeply influences who we are.

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Featuring:

Mireille Reece, PsyD – LinkedIn
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

We’re designed to be attached to others. Mammalian brains care about their connections.

What’s the difference between a lizard or a turtle and a dog or a bat? Dogs and bats feed their young with milk and invest in their oversight until they’re mature and capable enough to manage their own lives.

We often think of ourselves as individuals, but our lives are spent embedded within the context of social relationships. These relationships influence and shape our brains, which deeply influences who we are. Research shows that relationships can reactivate neuroplastic processes and actually alter the structures and biochemistry of the brain (Neuroscience of human relationships). Individual brains do not exist in nature. Without mutually stimulating interactions, people and neurons wither and die.

Early nurturing of the prefrontal cortex through relationships has us to think well of ourselves, trust others, regulate emotions, maintain positive expectations, and utilize emotional intelligence in a moment-to-moment problem solving (Cozolino). Research shows that right brains tend to develop more in the first years of life. This helps us be more flexible and learn how to adapt — it really is survival of the fittest.

Mind Field from Vsauce

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The fundamentals of being human Aug 06, 2019

Show notes

In this inaugural episode, Mireille and Adam explore what it means to be human at the most basic level. Our goal is to explore the inner-workings of the human brain to better understand our humanity. What are we capable of? What are the common experiences of life we all share? We start by asking the question, “what are the fundamentals of being human?”

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Featuring:

Mireille Reece, PsyD – LinkedIn
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Designed to feel

As humans, we are fundamentally designed to feel. Feelings aren’t facts but they are feedback. When we can consider our feelings in conjunction with other data, we’re apt to make wiser decisions. Whether our feelings or they don’t, they’re still feedback.

We have a complex brain, a mind, and relationships (brainstem: the Reptile brain + limbic system: the mammalian brain and the neocortex: the Human brain.
We have emotions.
We are energy-based beings (electrical current makes us tick). Neurons that fire together, wire together.
a. Where attention, energy flows—we feed whatever it is we focus on. Happiness/changes in how feel can be modified in part by what we choose to focus on. Example - getting a job.
b. Dan Siegel says it like this “Where attention goes, neuro firing flows, and neuro connections grow.”

Designed to connect

As humans, we are fundamentally designed to connect and be connected with others. When we don’t have a community wherein we can be our authentic selves, we’re apt to struggle more than we would without them.

Is connection or touch with other humans required?
Attachment is 100% learned - it is not genetically determined. That brings hope because we can modify our relationship as we, too, change.

We all struggle

As humans, we do not get the option to opt out the struggle. We may not be able to pick our struggles, but, nonetheless we all struggle.

Adam says “Admit the struggle. Identify the lie. Seek the truth.”

As it relates to coping, the value of naming our struggles is so important. It involves more aspects of the brain when we put words to our struggles so that we’re better able to cope.

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