Neural Circuitry: Brain vs. Writing

Neuroscience has come a long way. Thanks to modern advancements in positron emission tomography (PET), brain mapping, and neuroimaging, neurologists can better see how the brain learns good habits versus bad.

The brain doesn’t see the moral difference between good and bad behavior. It simply favors and stores any activity that results in pleasure or self-preservation. This can be a double-edged sword, since bad or immoral behavior can also result in pleasure or self-preservation. Regardless, when someone learns something, the dopamine level is higher when that person is in a pleasurable situation where they are comfortable and calm. Dopamine, of course, is a neurotransmitter that increases pleasure. But it has a few lesser-known effects as well: It also increases your motivation and likelihood of perseverance.

Motivation? Perseverance? Dopamine sounds like a crucial factor in my quest to write every day. Maybe even THE most crucial factor.

Once the brain has decided to store information, the amygdala is like a two-way switch that must decide whether or not to send what was just learned to either the prefrontal cortex (the higher cognitive brain) or the basal ganglia (the involuntary brain).

The higher cognitive brain is called “reflective” in that it is logical, methodical, analytical, and deliberate. This is where you want your best learned behaviors to go. When your brain is in this mode of learning, it’s in what’s called a “positive brain state”.

The involuntary brain is called “reactive” because it is quick, automatic, intuitive, and impulsive. It relies on emotions and habits, and is therefore the primary home for impulsive behavior. Also, if one is uncomfortable or feeling high amounts of stress at the time they receive pleasurable input, the amygdala is more likely to send information to the basal ganglia. This helps explain why so many people with high stress levels tend to develop self-destructive habits. For example, over-eating helps people deal with stress because it causes both pleasurable input and is a form of self-preservation, even though it is a poor health choice in the long run.

It’s interesting to see that the higher cognitive brain lines up with my walking the tightrope analogy from the previous post, while the involuntary brain lines up rather well with the safety net.

Neuropsychologists have found that the brain can only use one of these two systems at a time when processing any information. If someone is in their involuntary brain mode (ex: zoning out, watching reruns on TV, etc.), they aren’t using their higher cognitive brain because they literally can’t … until it is reengaged.

These learned pieces of information and specialized behaviors keep getting reinforced with dopamine hits until they form what’s known as a neurological circuit.

Every time I sit down to write, but instead watch YouTube, there’s a dopamine release in my brain that strengthens that neurological circuit, making it harder and harder to choose writing next time I’m presented with that choice. Every time I let procrastination win, the circuit keeps growing until it’s nearly impossible to break.

It turns out the age-old wisdom that you shouldn’t practice what you don’t want to become is now scientifically proven and can even be visually tracked with brain scans.

What’s scary is, once a big neurological circuit is stored in your brain, it’s in there for good. You can build another neurological construct to inhibit it, but you can’t get the original construct out. What’s worse, inhibitors can be taken out by stress, causing the old habits to re-establish themselves. That’s why people under stressful deadlines sometimes relapse and do everything but what they’re supposed to be doing. So the best hope is to build upon the inhibitor until it’s stronger than the circuit that’s causing problems in the first place. (Unfortunately, inhibitors can also be a double-edged sword–It’s why so many people who were trying to quit smoking fell into the trap of getting addicted to smoke alternatives.)

Perhaps that’s part of what’s meant when writers say we have to find our own method, and why getting a new, radically different piece of writing software (or other such gimmick) can invigorate us to write when the traditional old vanilla software couldn’t. I’m building whole new neurological circuits around different methods of attack to get myself to write, because the traditional method of just sitting down and writing has been punished too much.

Growing an inhibitor network that’s larger than an existing (and particularly monstrous) neural network is possible, but it’s a tall order. It requires years of discipline, and the danger of falling out of practice–especially during times of high stress–always looms. My father-in-law managed to quit smoking “cold turkey” despite doing it for decades, and has never relapsed, all for the love of his grandchildren.

So if I want this bad enough, I must find the steel will my father-in-law exhibited and keep vying for new ways to get the same job done. Once I’ve found something that works, it’s more important than ever that I don’t start choosing YouTube and other such vices instead. I need to grow and nurture these new neural networks, rewarding them by choosing them over procrastination time and time again, or I’ll be right back to testing the security fence of my own making for weaknesses.