#developing mind

The Developing Mind (Daniel Siegel, 2012)

“Philosophers have long noted the differing styles of knowing about the world;

they have contrasted creative, synthetic, emotional, intuitive, and nonconscious patterns with those of critical, analytic, intellectual, rational, and conscious modes of thought.

There may be a very basic reason for this long history of seeing dichotomies in human experience.

As we’ve discussed, the anatomic structure and neurochemistry of the two halves of the brain are somewhat distinct.

But even more than mere anatomy and physiology, the processes that have now been identified to be dominant in the functioning of each hemisphere generally support the philosophers’ observations.”

(…)

“Studies of emotion and bilaterality have led to several different theoretical models.

At this point, there is no clear view of some simple way in which emotion is asymmetrically processed.

One view is based on emotional intensity: It holds that the right hemisphere is able to generate and experience more intense emotion than the left. (…)

It may indeed be the right hemisphere that is capable of sensing a “gut reaction” to something.

Emotions are directly influenced by the right brain’s representations of the body’s changing states.

The sensations experienced as visceral representations in the right hemisphere may be quite difficult to translate into the words of the left hemisphere.

The “language of the right hemisphere,” the nonverbal representations, may be a more direct means of both being aware of and expressing primary emotional reactions.”

(…)

“Another view is based on a distinction between “social” and “basic emotions.”

Social emotions—adaptations of emotional states to meet the needs of social situations—are thought to be functions of the left hemisphere.

In this model, basic emotions include both primary and categorical emotions as these have been defined in Chapter 4; they are the value responses to internal or external events and are thought to be products of the right hemisphere.

In this view, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise, interest/excitement, enjoyment/joy, and shame are all part of the right hemisphere’s processing.

Display rules—the culturally transmitted lessons about which, and how, emotions can be expressed in social settings—determine the social appropriateness of affective expression and are presumably mediated by the left hemisphere. 

This view is consistent with the notion proposed earlier that the left hemisphere has an inherent external bias toward attention and memory processing, whereas the right is biased toward internal mental experience. 

Spontaneous motor output, the direct expression of internal states via affective signals, is a product of the right hemisphere.

The Developing Mind (Daniel Siegel, 2012)

“As this therapist and patient illustrate, engaging in direct communication is more than just understanding or even perceiving the signals—both verbal and nonverbal—sent between two people.

For “full” emotional communication, one person needs to allow his state of mind to be influenced by that of the other.

In this example, the therapist’s sensitivity to the patient’s array of signals allows his own state to become aligned with that of the patient. 

The sense that his head is “about to burst,” followed by the release of pressure, shows how the patient’s shifts from bewilderment to rage to sadness is experienced by the therapist.”

(…)

“The alignment of the therapist’s state allows him to have an experience as close as possible to what the patient’s subjective world is like at that moment. 

Sensitivity to signals allows for the therapist’s internal response in his own state, which permits an awareness of his perceptions of the patient’s experience. 

In addition to yielding important experiential information for the therapist, such an alignment permits a nonverbal form of communication to the patient that she is being “understood” in the deepest sense.

Her state directly influences his; she is “feeling felt” by another person. This attunement of states forms the nonverbal basis of collaborative, contingent communication.

The capacity to achieve this attuned form of communication, sometimes called “affect attunement,” is dependent on an individual’s sensitivity to signals.”

(…)

“As two individuals’ states are brought into alignment, a form of what we can call “mental state resonance” can occur, in which each person’s state both influences and is influenced by that of the other.

There are moments in which people also need to be alone and not in alignment; an attuned other knows when to “back off” and stop the alignment process.

Intimate relationships involve this circular dance of attuned communication, in which there are alternating moments of engaged alignment and distanced autonomy. (…)

“The point is that the activities of the brain, these layers of increasingly complex information processing, become organized in a patterned fashion.

We experience these patterns of activity as states of mind. We will see that a state of mind does two fundamental things:

It coordinates activity in the moment, and it creates a pattern of brain activation that can become more likely in the future.

That is, a state of mind can become a remembered brain activity configuration or neural net profile.”

(…)

“We are always in a perpetual state of being created and creating ourselves.

We will never be the same, and we have never been quite the way we are right at this moment. 

This emergence of being as we flow from state to state is characterized by an underlying sense that there is an incredible amount of both freedom and cohesion within the system in a given moment.

As a person’s states of mind emerge in ways determined by the system’s own internal constraints and by the external constraints of interpersonal connections with others, the self is perpetually being created.”

(…)

“On a daily basis, we each experience this sense of emergence when we enter a “bottom-up” mode of perceiving reality.

The sense of vitality in such living provides a window to the evolving quality of states of mind and human experience.

In contrast, recursive or repeating patterns in these states can bring a sense of familiarity to these new encounters.

This recursive quality reinforces patterns of representational response learned from earlier encounters with the world.

This quality can be adaptive in allowing us to respond rapidly to our perceptions of the world.

When engrained and restrictive patterns are taken to their extremes, however, the mind can become deadened to the vital and emergent uniqueness of lived experience.”

(…)

““Continuity” refers to the strength of previously achieved states, and therefore the probability of their repetition; it implies sameness, familiarity, and predictability.

“Flexibility” indicates the system’s degree of sensitivity to environmental conditions; it involves the capacity for variability, novelty, and uncertainty.

The ability to produce new variations allows the system to adapt to the environment. However, excessive variation or flexibility leads toward random activation.

On the other hand, rigid adherence to previously engrained states produces excessive continuity and minimizes the system’s ability to adapt and change. (…)

The Developing Mind (Daniel Siegel, 2012)

““Temperament” describes some of the aspects of inborn characteristics, including sensitivity to the environment, intensity of emotional response, baseline global mood, regularity of biological cycles, and attraction to or withdrawal from novel situations.

These inborn features of the nervous system, which are the results of both genetic and intrauterine factors, probably have powerful shaping effects throughout the lifespan.

Temperament can evoke particular parenting responses and create its own self-fulfilling reinforcements, which further amplify the inborn trait.

The example of a slow-to-warm up or shy child whose mother has little patience for his hesitancy illustrates how the response of others can engrain temperamental features.”

(…)

“One’s thinking or behavior can become disrupted if arousal moves beyond the boundaries of the window of tolerance.

For some persons, this window may be quite narrow. For such individuals, emotional processes may only become conscious when their intensity nears the boundaries of the window and is on the verge of disorganizing the functioning of the system.

For others, a wide range of emotion may be both tolerable and available to consciousness—from pleasant emotions including joy, excitement, or love, to unpleasant ones such as anger, sadness, or fear.”

(…)

“The example of temperamental differences reveals how windows can be shaped by individuals’ constitutional qualities.

People with shy temperaments may find emotional intensity of many sorts very uncomfortable, and may seek environments that are familiar to them and that do not evoke such disturbing and disorganizing inner sensations.

Within the social context of being with attachment figures with whom they have secure relationships, such individuals may feel safe enough to move toward novel situations.

Without such a context, they may withdraw and become socially isolated.”

(…)

“For others with more adaptive sensitivities, novelty may be quite pleasurable, evoking a feeling of excitement that is not disruptive to their sense of balance.

Familiarity in these bolder individuals may sometimes become quite boring and create an internal sense of restlessness. 

Children with “easy” temperaments are characterized by such open approaches; on the whole, they make life for their parents less demanding.

Those with the more irritable and unpredictable “difficult” temperaments are “moody” and have frequent bursts outside of their windows of tolerance, creating a challenge for many parents. 

After 13 years at Columbia University, Bradley S. Peterson, MD, joined CHLA last year as the inaugural director of the Institute for the Developing Mind (IDM) at The Saban Research Institute.