How to create a happiness state of mind

Image: Mind Mapping.

Welcome to part 2 of Your Brain and the Art of Happiness.

The main point of the Dalai Lama’s teachings as I understand it is that happiness is not a luxury – but is the purpose of our existence. Not only that – but there is a definite path leading toward it. The first step is to identify the factors that invariably lead to suffering and those that lead to happiness. Then we must begin to eliminate the ‘suffering–causing factors’ and cultivate the ‘happiness-causing ones.’  

Happiness has many levels 

In the Buddhist tradition there are four factors – wealth, worldly satisfaction, spirituality and enlightenment – which create the totality of an individual’s quest for happiness. Good health and a close circle of friends are also important but the door into all of these things is your state of mind. 

Create a happiness state-of-mind 

Your state of mind is not only necessary to create all the experiences in your life but also the filter through which you view them. Without a disciplined mind you are not really in control of what you are doing nor can you be independent of events. The real source of happiness is the control of your consciousness as observed in a calm mind or one engaged in meaningful work. These activities equate to happiness. 

Happiness – the basics 

A basic way to happiness is to cultivate affection and a sense of connection with other human beings. Even if you loose everything, you will have this. The Dali Lama often remarks that while he lost his country, he in a way gained the whole world. This is because he had the ability to bond with others quickly. Always look for what you have in common with others and you will never really be lonely. 

Decide what’s real 

No matter how powerful they may seem – negative emotions and states of mind have no foundation in reality. They are distortions stopping us from seeing things as they really are.  We have only to experience the shame and embarrassment after loosing our temper once to appreciate this. In contrast, when we experience positive emotions we get closer to the true nature of the universe and how we could be all the time.

Your brain and the art of happiness

Last month during his visit to Ireland, the Dalai Lama addressed a capacity crowd at the University of Limerick. He spoke at length about compassion and happiness,  emphasising that we all possess the ability to achieve happiness and a meaningful life.

As a neuroscientist and educator I have had a keen interest in this area over the past 30 years and I have tried to include something of the flavour of what the Dalai Lama teaches in my own research in neuroscience – the scientific study of the brain.

In his book The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama points to four basic principles of happiness:

1. The purpose of life is happiness.
2. Happiness is determined more by the state of one’s mind than by one’s external conditions, circumstances, or events—at least once one’s basic survival needs are met.
3. Happiness can be achieved through the systematic training of our hearts and minds, through reshaping our attitudes and outlook.
4. The key to happiness is in our own hands.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that the achievement of happiness is scientific and requires discipline. It’s no surprise to me then that the Dalai Lama in Limerick spoke of the need for more neuroscientific research into emotions and the health benefits of cultivating a more compassionate and loving outlook in life.

Over the coming week I will explore these teachings in more detail and look at ways in which we can apply them to help our brains break free from the trap of unhappiness.

In search of memory

Neuroscientist Eric Kandel was a recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. He shared the prize with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard.

Kandel believes that memory is everything and without it we are nothing. Memory is the glue that binds our mental life together and provides a sense of continuity in our lives.

Kandel’s book on the brain for the general public, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, won both the Los Angeles Times and U.S. National Academy of Science Awards for best book in Science and Technology in 2008. A documentary film based on the book, also entitled In Search of Memory, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim.

Weekly Round Up

How does cigarette addiction affect the brain?

The effects of nicotine upon brain regions involved in addiction mirror those of cocaine, according to new neuroscience research.

Aspirin and other anti-inflammatory drugs taken for pain relief may reduce the effectiveness of anti-depressants such as Prozac, say US researchers.

Moments of absent mindedness such as losing your keys could be the result of tiny parts of the brain taking “naps” to recharge, a study finds.Researchers discovered that contrary to popular opinion the brain is not always entirely asleep or awake but parts of it can go “offline”.

Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology and their colleagues have tied the human aversion to losing money to a specific structure in the brain-the amygdala.

Music is not only able to affect your mood — listening to particularly happy or sad music can even change the way we perceive the world, according to researchers from the University of Groningen.

The positive effects of mindfulness meditation on pain and working memory may result from an improved ability to regulate a crucial brain wave called the alpha rhythm. This rhythm is thought to “turn down the volume” on distracting information, which suggests that a key value of meditation may be helping the brain deal with an often-overstimulating world. And in other  mindfulness research – fMRI shows how mindfulness meditation changes the decision making process

 

Anesthesia – a neuroscience phenomenon

How the brain reacts to anesthesia is a neuroscientific phenomenon that includes a dash of mystery. In this fascinating video Emery Brown, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Professor of Computational Neuroscience, MIT  and Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia, Harvard Medical School Massachusetts General Hospital, sets out to demystify some of the mystery for us.

Gabrielle Giffords’ neurosurgeon speaks about her surgery

 

G. Michael Lemole Jr., M.D., keynote speaker at Health Journalism 2011

G. Michael Lemole Jr., M.D., chief of neurosurgery at the University of Arizona Department of Surgery and University Medical Center, found himself in the media spotlight after he performed brain surgery on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after she sustained a gunshot wound to the head in Tucson on Jan. 8.

As the keynote speaker at Health Journalism 2011, he recounted the treatment of the congresswoman earlier this year and his experience working with the media:

Everyone made a big deal of what we did, but it’s what we do everyday … This is academic medicine at its best

In the operation, Lemole and Martin E. Weinand, M.D., removed part of Gifford’s skull to allow her brain to swell, as well as removing dead brain tissue and skull fragments caused by the bullet.

 “We basically take part of the skull off and let the swollen brain relax,” explained Lemole. The procedure can relieve pressure on the brain but it can also worsen edema – the build-up of fluid that can cause an “outward herniation.” They also had to remove damaged parts of the brain to “save the good brain underneath.”

The procedure is informed by data gathered during surgery on soldiers injured in the Iraq war, he said. At some point, surgeons will replace the bone or use a prosthetic.

On Jan. 15, Lemole repaired Giffords’ orbital roof fracture through a skull base approach.  The last surgery that Giffords received was a ventriculostomy, which measured intracranial pressure and drained fluid in the brain. He credits the use of growing use of simulation in surgical training for allowing doctors to successfully perform operations like the ventriculostomy. In addition to simulation training, Lemole said the “flawless” EMT response and the multidisciplinary nature of trauma team combined to improve Giffords’ odds.

Lemole supervised the congresswoman’s care until she was released to a Houston rehabilitation hospital on Jan. 21 and during  this time, was available to the media. “We strategized with ourselves, administrators, and with the family. The family asked us to get the correct information out,” he said. Lemole said he chose his words carefully. “I don’t think I gave a rosy account,” he said, describing his careful use of the term “functional recovery” instead of terms like “full recovery” or “back to normal.”

Giffords Progress

Giffords outcome was impossible to predict at the outset of her injury. Generally, the odds of dying from a gunshot wound to the head range from 56 to 94 percent, Lemole said. If the path of the bullets goes through the geographic center of the brain, through the ventricles or through multiples lobes, the prognosis is not good. In Giffords’ case, the bullet did not cross from one side of the brain to the other, but travelled through the left side. The patient’s level of consciousness at admission is another factor –  at the time, Lemole was quoted as saying that Giffords was able to follow simple commands from the doctors.

The Arizona Republic newspaper reports “that she can stand on her own and walk a little but is working to improve her gait.” The use of her right arm and leg “is limited but improving” . Longer sentences frustrate her and she speaks most often in a single word or declarative phrases. She longs to leave the rehab center, repeating “I miss Tucson” and wheeling herself to the doors at the end of the hall to peer out. When that day comes, Giffords told her nurse, she plans to “walk a mountain.”

Sources:

Boston Blog

Health Journalism Blog

The Arizona Republic

The Empathic Brain

Empathy is a powerful interpersonal tool which is under-valued in our society.  Ineed it is a skill that is frequently underutilised. Perhaps this is in part due to the misconception that em-pathetic somehow implies pathetic? It is often confused with sympathetic, but while empathy denotes a deep emotional understanding of another’s feelings or problems, sympathy is more general and can apply to small annoyances or setbacks.

In Deep Brain Learning: Pathways to Potential with Challenging Youth, Brendtro, Mitchell, and McCall summarize empathy as follows:

Empathy is the foundation of moral development and pro-social behavior. The original word began in the German language as Einfuhlung which is literally translated as feeling into. Empathy taps the ability of mirror neurons to display in our own brain the emotions, thoughts, and motives of another. Empathy allows us to share anothers joy and pain and motivates care and concern.

Stephen Covey writes in his book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’

Empathetic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with.  Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretation, you are dealing with the reality inside the other person’s head.

Empathy allows us to not only  interact with each other effectively, but
also to predict the actions, intentions, and feelings of others. A useful trait indeed. But is empathy something that we can cultivate or is it more innate? Are we hard wired for empathy?

Despite the advances in our understanding of neuroplasticity, research on the empathic brain is still in its early stages. In recent years, the field of social neuroscience has begun to shed light on the neural underpinnings of empathy.

In an interesting review paper,”The Social Neuroscience of Empathy“, Tania Singer and Claus Lamm of the University of Zurich,  give an overview of this research, and provide recommendations for future research. If you are interested in learning more, you can download a pdf copy by clicking here.

You might also like:

The Neuroscience of Emotions

You mi

Weekly Round Up

Research shows that our brains understand music not only as emotional diversion, but also as a form of motion and activity.

Research shows that our brains understand music not only as emotional diversion, but also as a form of motion and activity. The same areas of the brain that activate when we swing a golf club or sign our name also engage when we hear expressive moments in music. Brain regions associated with empathy are activated, too, even for listeners who are not musicians.

And still on the theme of music and the brain, a recent study of seventy healthy adults ages sixty to eighty-three with various levels of music education starting around the age of ten showed impressive differences in brain functioning far later in life than any other research has previously shown.

A new study has suggested that sustained training in mindfulness meditation may impact distinct domains of human decision-making, enabling them to make decisions rationally.

Older bilingual adults compensate for age-related declines in brainpower by developing new strategies to process language, according to a recent study published in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition.

Emerging research suggest antidepressant medications may aid creation and survival of new brain cells after a brain injury.

New study examines brain processes behind facial recognition 

Finally, here is an interesting post from Chris Mooney on the science of why we don’t believe science.