Be mindful of what you think

Photo: Contributed

Your thoughts are physical. Yes, you heard me right. The thoughts that you think leave a lasting impression not only on your mind, but on your brain. Repetitive thought patterns leave an indelible imprint on the physical structure of your brain.

Like an orchestra playing a specific song, the billions of neurons in your brain communicate with each other in a specific fashion, creating a song that becomes familiar and unique to you. And just like a talented musician, the repetition of specific patterns, like the individual notes of the song, eventually becomes second nature.

And so it is with the neural patterns in your brain. It’s like your brain is always playing “Name that Tune”. It searches for patterns and to make your life easier, when it recognizes a pattern it fires the corresponding links without your conscious awareness.

This is how all learning happens. This is why we don’t have to consciously think about how we pick up our spoon to eat or how we drive our car. We have repeated these behaviours so many times that it becomes unconscious.

However in the beginning we had to focus intently on the task at hand, create associations with what we were learning and we needed to repeat these actions over and over again.

Take eating for example. We learned early on that if we very carefully scooped the food on to the spoon and brought the spoon towards our mouth, then we received the reward of nourishment. We learn through our effortful focus, association and repetition. These are the laws of neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change itself.

Dr. Pascal-Leone, a neuroscientist, was interested in how thoughts alone can change brain structure. The experiment involved two groups. One group was instructed to sit at the piano and repeat a specific piano scale with both hands. When they examined the brains of these individuals they found that the part of the brain that is responsible for finger flexion grew larger. The second group was instructed to sit in front of the piano and rather than practicing the piano scale, they were told to merely think about their fingers moving along the keys as if they were really playing. At the end of this study even Dr. Leone was surprised to see that the brains of the participants in the second group changed in the exact same way as the people who were actually playing the piano.

What this suggests is that we have to be careful of what we think.

If we tend to be preoccupied with fear and anxiety then guess what happens? Our focus on fear or anxiety reinforces specific neural patterns that create more fear and anxiety. And you might be thinking, well then just stop thinking that way. For those of you who suffer, you know how difficult this can be.

Changing our neural patterns is not as easy as you might think. The brain literally gets stuck in a rut.

This is where our unique human ability to be self reflective comes into play. We have the unique ability to take a different perspective and become the “observer of self”. Instead of being immersed within the thoughts and emotions of worry and anxiety, we can step to the side and simply notice our thoughts and emotional patterns. This noticing or awareness is the first step in stopping the neural pattern that is associated with fear or anxiety.

Though our conscious awareness, we can make physical changes to the structure and function of our brain. Effortful attention, combined with changing our associations and repeating positive behaviour can change the wiring of our brain and consequently change the quality of our life.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.