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The brain’s ‘delete’ button - interesting article


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https://amp.fastcompany.com/3059634/your-brain-has-a-delete-button-heres-how-to-use-it

Very interesting article and I think it can help some people with taking control of their behavioural responses that maintain the ocd spiral. It all boils down to focus and consolidation of thought through sleep.

Full text:

There’s an old saying in neuroscience: neurons that fire together wire together. This means the more you run a neuro-circuit in your brain, the stronger that circuit becomes. This is why, to quote another old saw, practice makes perfect. The more you practice piano, or speaking a language, or juggling, the stronger those circuits get.

The ability to learn is about more than building and strengthening neural connections.

For years this has been the focus for learning new things. But as it turns out, the ability to learn is about more than building and strengthening neural connections. Even more important is our ability to break down the old ones. It’s called “synaptic pruning.” Here’s how it works.

Your Brain’s Delete Button And How to Use It

Your Brain Is Like A Garden

Imagine your brain is a garden, except instead of growing flowers, fruits, and vegetables, you grow synaptic connections between neurons. These are the connections that neurotransmitters like dopamine, seratonin, and others travel across.

“Glial cells” are the gardeners of your brain–they act to speed up signals between certain neurons. But other glial cells are the waste removers, pulling up weeds, killing pests, raking up dead leaves. Your brain’s pruning gardeners are called “microglial cells.” They prune your synaptic connections. The question is, how do they know which ones to prune?

Researchers are just starting to unravel this mystery, but what they do know is the synaptic connections that get used less get marked by a protein, C1q (as well as others). When the microglial cells detect that mark, they bond to the protein and destroy–or prune–the synapse.

This is how your brain makes the physical space for you to build new and stronger connections so you can learn more.

Why Sleep Matters

Have you ever felt like your brain is full? Maybe when starting a new job, or deep in a project. You’re not sleeping enough, even though you’re constantly taking in new information. Well, in a way, your brain actually is full.

When you learn lots of new things, your brain builds connections, but they’re inefficient, ad hoc connections. Your brain needs to prune a lot of those connections away and build more streamlined, efficient pathways. It does that when we sleep.

Your brain cleans itself out when you sleep–your brain cells shrinking by up to 60% to create space for your glial gardeners to come in take away the waste and prune the synapses.

Have you ever woken up from a good night’s rest and been able to think clearly and quickly? That’s because all the pruning and pathway-efficiency that took place overnight has left you with lots of room to take in and synthesize new information–in other words, to learn.

Thinking with a sleep-deprived brain is like hacking your way through a dense jungle with a machete. Its overgrown, slow going, exhausting. 

This is the same reason naps are so beneficial to your cognitive abilities. A 10- or 20-minute nap gives your microglial gardeners the chance to come in, clear away some unused connections, and leave space to grow new ones.

Thinking with a sleep-deprived brain is like hacking your way through a dense jungle with a machete. It’s overgrown, slow-going, exhausting. The paths overlap, and light can’t get through. Thinking on a well-rested brain is like wandering happily through Central Park; the paths are clear and connect to one another at distinct spots, the trees are in place, you can see far ahead of you. It’s invigorating.

Be Mindful Of What You’re Mindful Of

And in fact, you actually have some control over what your brain decides to delete while you sleep. It’s the synaptic connections you don’t use that get marked for recycling. The ones you douse are the ones that get watered and oxygenated. So be mindful of what you’re thinking about.

If you spend too much time reading theories about the end of Game of Thrones and very little on your job, guess which synapses are going to get marked for recycling?

If you’re in a fight with someone at work and devote your time to thinking about how to get even with them, and not about that big project, you’re going to wind up a synaptic superstar at revenge plots but a poor innovator.

To take advantage of your brain’s natural gardening system, simply think about the things that are important to you. Your gardeners will strengthen those connections and prune the ones that you care about less. It’s how you help the garden of your brain flower.

Judah Pollack is the co-author of ‘The Chaos Imperative’, and Olivia Fox Cabane is the author of ‘The Charisma Myth’

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@Orwell1984Great article and good encouragement for me to continue to work on the sleep issue! As a napper and a gardener, I especially like the following quote:

15 hours ago, Orwell1984 said:

This is the same reason naps are so beneficial to your cognitive abilities. A 10- or 20-minute nap gives your microglial gardeners the chance to come in, clear away some unused connections, and leave space to grow new ones.

@Wren yes thanks to your post, I have been trying to improve my sleep habits. I always know that sleep is important but can forget about tending to it like diet and exercise and even cbt!

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I learnt about this principle in an online course called "learning how to learn" a few years ago. Another thing the course mentioned was that the last things that you think about before sleep get the most imprinted in the brain - in the context of the course it recommended to people who were studying for exams to re-read their notes just before bed. But in CBT terms it's a good idea to really work on not ruminating in the evenings and maybe read something positive yet simple (not challenging or stimulating) before bed. 

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That's an interesting article although I'm not sure it really explains how to ensure that you think about the things that you want to 'store' and not the things that needing to be subject to pruning! 

I wonder whether for OCD sometimes our focus needs to be on 'doing' rather than 'thinking'; whether that's working or engaging in hobbies. If we try not to think about things we get the whole 'I must not think about purple elephants (*now I can't stop thinking about purple elephants) scenario. The connections involved in the thinking that those actions involve, might then take precedence over the OCD thoughts and lead to pruning away of the OCD connections.

Edited by BelAnna
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Sufferers ask, why don't the thoughts go away. I liken it to the thoughts being stuck. The more compulsions you do, the more stuck the thoughts get. This article backs that up. If you're constantly ruminating about some thoughts, you are keeping them energized and fired up. Compulsions reiterate how important the thoughts are, so they don't get pruned.

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The course I did also talked about a thing called 'chunking' whereby if you are given new information you will remember it if you can slot the new facts into a story/theory/concept that you already know well - the story/theory already exists as a strongly consolidated network of synapses in your brain so it is easy to just add on a few extra bits. This why learning a whole new subject takes time because you have to build up a new story in which to fit the new facts, and if you can't build up the story it is highly likely you will never remember the individual facts in the long term. So in OCD, if your intrusive thoughts connect to core beliefs they are more likely to stick, or if you build up a whole new narrative around them they will also stick. 

Edited by Guest
Typo
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36 minutes ago, Handy said:

If sleep put ocd into recovery we would all be in recovery. 

I don't think the suggestion is that sleeping alone puts OCD in recovery, but that sufferers can learn from how sleep affects our brains efforts to process and organize information to understand why certain behaviors help/hurt our recovery.  In particular, that the more time you devote to certain thoughts/activities the more they are reinforced, so an important part of recovery (as PB and others mention) is to make conscious efforts not to add extra focus to our anxieties.  Of course we can't directly tell our brain NOT to think about something, but at the very least we can actively focus on more positive/wanted behaviors and thoughts to help crowd out the unwanted thoughts.  It's like working in a noisy environment, maybe you can't make some of the noises you hear go away, but you can, at least, work on focusing on other things so that the noises fade in to the background.

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17 hours ago, Wren said:

The course I did also talked about a thing called 'chunking' whereby if you are given new information you will remember it if you can slot the new facts into a story/theory/concept that you already know well - the story/theory already exists as a strongly consolidated network of synapses in your brain so it is easy to just add on a few extra bits. This why learning a whole new subject takes time because you have to build up a new story in which to fit the new facts, and if you can't build up the story it is highly likely you will never remember the individual facts in the long term. So in OCD, if your intrusive thoughts connect to core beliefs they are more likely to stick, or if you build up a whole new narrative around them they will also stick. 

That makes sense Wren; that we have pre-existing semantic networks, including narratives, which are easily added to and so our OCD narratives are easily added to.

I guess that reinforces the importance of the 'Cognitive' element of CBT- that challenging belief sets and creating new narratives is important. I need to remember this! 

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Guest OCDhavenobrain

Yep and the fact that many of us ruminate about past memorirs and cpnncet those memories with alternative wievpoints is pretty sad. We actually change our memorirs and we will never get them back.

 

Would want to write more and maybe I do. Bought a new keyboard today so I can finally write more detailed answers. Nice reading you gave

Edited by OCDhavenobrain
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