“Those just are my feeling. You can’t reason with them!”
“Let’s be reasonable. Don’t let feelings get in the way of facts.”
Both of those statements are wrong.
They are wrong because they look at the brain as if it has different parts: an emotional part, and a reasonable part.
But your brain is a network.
And this network seeks integration.
This is what Lisa Feldman Barrett argues in chapter three of her new book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (I’ll be going through one lesson a week building up to the launch of the Being With podcast on neuroscience and faith—I’ve already recorded 8 episodes!).
Previous Posts:
- Your Brain Is Not For Thinking
- You Have One Brain (Not Three)
- Your Brain is a Network
- Your (Social) Brain Wires to the World
- Your Brain Predicts (Almost) Everything
- Your Brain Works With Other Brains
- Brains Build More Than One Kind of MIND
- Our Brains Create Social Reality
Metaphors for the Brain
People have been coming up with ways of describing the brain for thousands of years. But usually these descriptions are little more than metaphors.
We don’t really have a right and left brain that do different things (they really do the same thing in different ways). We don’t really have a slow brain and a fast brain that run on different circuits (though we do have through processes that are more efficient than others).
Right and Left. Slow and Fast.
These are just metaphors.
A Network (like an air-travel system)
Barrett suggests that our brain really is a network— “a collection of parts that are connected to function as a single unit…a network of 128 billion neurons connected as a single, massive, and flexible structure” (30-31).
This network is best described as a “global air-travel system” (which Barrett knows is another metaphor).
Air travel moves individual passengers from place to place in planes. But not every plane goes to every airport (that wouldn’t be efficient).
Some airports are hubs for different activity and different airlines. You can get from Chicago to Moscow many different ways, some more direct than others. If a hub is down because of weather, then flights are redirected, eventually arriving at their destination.
Similarly, our brains have neurons that gather in clusters (like a plane or a local, municipal airport). These clusters are gathered into “hubs” in the brain that are large structures with more identifiable functions.
“Brain hubs, like airport hubs, make a complicated system efficient. They allow most neurons to participate globally even as they focus more locally. Hubs form the backbone of communication throughout the brain” (34).
When there is damage (temporary or permanent) to a hub, the brain reroutes traffic through others hubs. But this is less efficient. As Barrett says, “Hub damage is associated with depressions, schizophrenia, dyslexia, chronic pain, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other disorders” (36).
Neurotransmitters are like the ground staff that gets everyone where they need to be. Glutamate, serotonin, and dopamine, make it easier or harder for certain messages to move around the airports.
When we have problems with our neurotransmitters then everything gets gummed up and the brain network doesn’t communicate they way it is supposed to.
Flexible, Adaptive, and Redundant
Like any good network, our brains—at their best—are flexible, adaptive, and redundant.
Brains are flexible because neurons, clusters, and hubs all do multiple things. Each level is adaptive, changing and growing over time. And processes can be accomplished in multiple places and in multiple ways—hence, redundancy.
This flexibility, adaptability, and redundancy adds up to what is called complexity.
Complexity leads to Integration, Creativity, and Resilience
The more our brains are integrated at higher levels, the greater the complexity, which leads to greater flexibility and adaptability.
When our brains are integrated vertically (you only have one brain, but it feels like you have three when you are dis-integrated), and when they are integrate horizontally (there is not right-left divide, unless you are dis-integrated), then we are more creative in our thinking and feeling, and we are more resilient to the ups and downs of life.
A Reason for Emotions and the Feeling of Facts
The truth is, because our brains are a network we never just have emotions that can’t be reasoned with.
And we never just have the facts without feelings (because your brain isn’t for thinking anyway).
In reality, there are often very good (sometimes bad) reasons for your emotions (because they are connected to the stories we are telling to ourselves about what is happening in the world). Those reasons/stories are either connected to reality or they aren’t.
And in reality, the facts that you bandy around are important to you exactly because your care about what they are connected to. You have feelings about your facts—even if you deny it.
When our brain network is growing in complexity and integration then we will be flexible and adaptive in handling reason and emotion, facts and feelings (and the past, present, and future—but that is for another post).
But what is this entire “air-traffic system” doing?
It’s connecting to the world—the world out there.
The next post will be on how our brain network is wired to the world.
So you don’t miss any neuroscience and faith summaries of Barrett’s work, please subscribe to my newsletter (here or above in the sidebar) and/or follow the launch of Being With: On Neuroscience and Faith.