As you know I have some concerns about how the new found capacity of the human brain is being thought about, and used. We are in a new brain-changing era. The public relations people, the advertising agencies, and the corporate world, are all poising to capitalize on the amazing capacity of the human brain to change with its environment. I can predict a not too distant future where there will be intense social pressure to be actively enhancing your brain function. It seems likely, with the flexibility of the brain, and new brain measuring capabilities, that we may be able to modify our brain function. The concern I have is that we might not do so wisely. Here is why I think that way.
The human brain has been plastic for a long time. Do you know why? The short answer, and it is correct as far as it goes, is because it gave our species a competitive advantage. Basically, we were made the fittest by this development. But, that isn’t a very deep, or informative reason. No one really knows why. Researchers, as far as I can tell, are not really looking into that. Instead they are being funded to find applications for this new knowledge. This poses the prospect that we, as a species, could gain some control over our own brain development, and accidentally override the real reasons nature endowed us with this quality.
Consider the social dimension of our development. There is some evidence that the human brain developed as it did because we are a social species. Language, culture, art, and community all co-evolved with our plastic brains. We may have established the scientific capacity to provide evidence that we can improve memory, speed-up cognitive function and make the brain function more efficiently, but we don’t know how to measure, and show, if our brains are gaining the capacity for cooperation, social coordination, and compassion. In fact messing with one might mean messing with the other.
I come down in the camp, where it seems to me, that what is vitally important to the well-being of our species is that we preserve our ability to care for each other. I worry about us gaining this ability, to engineer the brain, in a culture that is so oriented toward individuality, that sees human potential in those same terms, and easily overlooks the social nature of who we are. Brain-change might just mean reinforcing these tendencies, the emphasis on individuality, at the expense of the social glue that gives us such incredible potential.
For instance, as I reviewed the body of public literature describing research into brain plasticity, I found no research addressing the social aspects of brain functioning. I found this despite Dan Goleman’s well-documented book on the social nature of the brain, despite neuro-scientists pointing out that the human brain develops best under conditions of synchrony with other brains, and even despite recent research that shows that human life is extended, with better quality, when people are more socially connected. The field is primarily interested in how individuals can change their brains.
This isn’t the end-all, or be-all, of brain research. There are a small minority of researchers, and practitioners, who are interested in how relationships effect brain development. There are some limited findings that show that human beings grow, in wisdom, consciousness, and social capacity through neuroplastic events. There are conditions that accompany and increase the probability of these kind of neuroplastic events. They happen primarily through intimate activities. Imagine that, intimacy promotes brain development! Below you will find some of the conditions that make this possible.
• a strong and resilient collaborative (mutually attuned) alliance
• moderate levels of stress and emotional arousal (interpersonal tension), alternating with calm
• intense and profound intersubjective moments of meeting
• information and experience gathered across multiple dimensions of cognition, emotion, sensations, and behaviors.
• activating brain neural networks involved in processing and regulating thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behavior
• new conceptual knowledge integrating emotional and bodily experience
• organizing experiences in ways that foster continued growth and integration.
(from Intimacy and Desire by David Schnarch, Ph.D. pg.289, (parentheses are mine)
It is my contention that all forms of intimacy promote the growth of the social dimension of our brains. This includes the very difficult forms of public intimacy, being real, that can occur in community situations. When this aspect of who we are, as a species, is ignored (because it seems too difficult) then we deprive each other of what is needed to create neuroplastic events that enhance our brains and feed our social capabilities. I believe we have an as yet unexplored social potential, that I would hate to see reduced, by too great an emphasis upon the potential of our individual brains.
l/d
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