Chris Crouch's Blog

External Versus Internal Reality

Among a group of people, the most successful person is usually the one whose viewpoint or image of reality is most closely related to reality. But why would someone's image of reality deviate from reality in the first place? It's easy to understand how that can happen if you understand how the brain creates images of reality.

In order to get information from your external world (your environment) into your internal world (your brain/mind), all incoming sensory information must first be converted into a language that your nervous system can understand...electrical impulses and chemicals (usually called neurotransmitters and hormones). The conversion to electrical impulses happens early in the process; so in one sense everything you experience quickly becomes just a bunch of electrical impulses. If you consider the five conventional forms of sensory input, they all work this way. Light waves, sound waves, molecules in the air, molecules ingested, pressure, temperature and pain are all converted to electrical impulses by your eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. The process of converting one form of energy to another is called transduction. All of your sensory organs have something called receptor cells (transducers) that perform this function. So...once your retinal receptor cells in the case of vision, or similar receptor cells in the case of your other sensory organs, finish processing the incoming information, the data is sent down the line and routed throughout your nervous system in the form of electrical impulses that trigger chemical messengers. The brain uses this data to reconstruct the experience that occurred in your external world. That's why neuroscientists say that we "see" with our brains...not our eyes. For example, in the case of eyesight, the impulses are routed to over thirty different cortical areas (areas of our thinking brain) for processing. Then the pieces of the vision puzzle are reassembled to create an internal image that we perceive as eyesight.

Well..so what? Well...that's why our image of reality can differ from reality. If we focus on just one part of this process...the reconstruction of the image...we can uncover some interesting things. The brain reconstructs the internal image that represents what we encounter in our external world by making comparisons. Comparison to what? I'll give you a hint. It's a key word in the theme song to one of the biggest chick flicks of all times...The Way We Were. You guessed it, the brain draws on your preexisting internal memory files to interpret what it is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or feeling. That's the point in the process that can create vast perceptual differences between and among different humans.

Most things get encoded into your memory with some sort of associated emotional tag. Let's say two people pass a certain place everyday overlooking a scenic view of the ocean. In one person's case, it is the very spot where their spouse proposed and they have now been happily married for over 20 years and still very much in love. In the other person's case, it is the very spot where their spouse told them they wanted a divorce after 20 miserable years of marriage. When the first person passes the spot each day, their brain probably creates a delightful and positive image of the scene. In the second person's case, their brain probably creates a delightful and positive, or dreadful and negative, image of the scene depending on whether on not they wanted to get out of the marriage. So...in both cases light waves interact with their retina...the light waves are converted to electro-chemical messengers that provoke various parts of the brain into creating an image of the scene in their brains. Running these electrical impulses through their memory filters creates the potential for similar or different interpretations of the same sensory input.

Here's a few practical insights we can draw from all this transduction, impulse-generating, emotional-tagging, brain-related talk:

• Surround yourself with things that trigger positive memories for you.
• Get rid of things that represent compromises in your life.
• Get rid of things that have negative memories associated with them (yep...including old photographs of people you don't really like that much that you have been hanging on to for some reason).
• Use feelings of failure, frustration, anger, anxiety, sadness, etc. to help you identify and upgrade faulty memory files. Odds are these particular memory files are out of sync with reality in some way.

You can probably figure out a lot of other ways to use this information to improve your life. I'll write about a big one in my next blog. Until then, remember...among a group of people, the most successful person is usually the one whose viewpoint or image of reality is most closely related to reality.

So...Streisand and Redford fans...who do you think was more in touch with reality...Hubble or Katie?

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Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.

Hold My Beer and Watch This!

Imagine suddenly finding yourself driving around in a high-powered race car without a steering wheel. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen doesn't it? Now replace the words 'driving around in high-powered race car' with 'walking around in a teenage body' and 'steering wheel' with 'prefrontal cortex' and you can begin to understand how nature can sometimes play nasty tricks on us humans. The prefrontal cortex is a fancy name for the part of the brain that helps control impulsive behavior, planning, organizing, good decision making and other so-called executive functions of the brain. It's our neural steering wheel. Some brain researchers believe that this part of the brain is not quite ready-for-prime-time until humans are well into their twenties. That's probably why so many young people display a "hold my beer and watch this" attitude until their mid-twenties. The part of the brain that handles sound judgement and responsible behavior is simply not finished yet. Of course, most scientists would rather share toothbrushes and underwear than share conclusions. Therefore, as usual you can expect to encounter plenty of disagreement among the experts on this prefrontal cortex issue if you dig into it.

I doubt if many teenagers are reading my blog...so what does this have to do with those of us, shall we say, beyond the mid-twenties. First, it helps us better understand the young people in our lives and gives those of us who are parents a way to distance ourselves from the erratic and sometime outrageous behavior of our offspring. We can always say to others, "I raised them to know better...it's that prefrontal cortex stuff causing problems you know!" It also helps us understand why we frequently have the desire to unwind some of the major decisions we made earlier in life. Of course, the two big ones are: Now...let me think about it again..."Why exactly did I choose this career?" or "Why did I marry this person?" If things have worked out great for you in both of these areas of life...then consider yourself pre-frontally blessed (or lucky). If they didn't, now you have a great excuse. You no longer have to try and convince yourself or others that you didn't really make a mistake...or that things are not really that bad. Now you have a scientific excuse and a neural scapegoat to blame...you can comfortably and blamelessly put past mistakes behind you and move forward in life.

Of course, you all know that making excuses and blaming your neurons won't really solve anything. But knowing that many of our major life decisions were made when we were in our "hold my beer and watch this" phase of life may help you understand, reevaluate and possibly alter your path in life now that your prefrontal cortex is fully up and running. If nothing else...you can use this information to scientifically scold your children. The next time you are going on a trip with them, you can say..."If you kids don't exercise some measure of control over your prefrontal cortices...I'll turn this car around and go home right this minute!"

If you want to know more about this prefrontal cortex stuff, go on the internet and take a look at some of the information on Dr. Jay Giedd's research.

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Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.