CHAPTER 1
The Human Brain
The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind.
— James D. Watson
One of the first things you learn when looking at any cognitive science is that you can't think without a brain. Although obvious, when you delve into the details, it's actually quite profound. Much of what you do — your references, your beliefs, and the 98 percent of "unconscious" thought processes — is physically represented in your brain. And that fact matters enormously to you and to your life, because no matter where you've been or where you are right now, you're in charge of your life going forward. You can choose the direction that life will take.
Today, understanding the brain is considered one of the most complex challenges known to science. But that hasn't always been the case. In ancient times, the heart was believed to be the source of all thoughts and intelligence. Ancient Egyptians, who went to great lengths to honor their dead and to carefully preserve the heart, scooped the brain out through the nostrils and threw it away.
Centuries later, most ten-year-olds can recite a rudimentary description of the central nervous system as the brain, the spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system. If they're still paying attention in high school, they'll be able to describe the functions of neurons and neurotransmitters. It isn't until they're well into medical training that they realize that we really haven't even begun to scratch the surface in understanding precisely how the brain works to control every aspect of our decision-making lives. It determines the answers to such diverse questions as who our friends should be, who we should marry, where we should go to school, what career we should pursue, and what we should have for dinner.
The brain is physically the central point of our ability to perceive and "make sense" of the world we live in. Our brains are constantly scanning our world for danger, trusted resources, and solutions to our problems. This chemical mixture of physical and psychological factors results in the experience you know and have today. Let's take a closer look.
Biological View
From a biological perspective, our brain is as important to our individual existence as the CPU is to an individual computer. Like CPUs, bigger brains correlate to more processing power. Faulty CPU instruction sets (like the 1994 bug in the Intel P5 Pentium floating point unit) are similar to dysfunctional brain processes; both can lead to erratic results. On the other hand, when there is alignment and harmony between the internal complexity of our brains and the external environment, it is like a flowing river with healthy high performance as a result.
Today, we have neural implants that provide deep-brain stimulation to patients with Parkinson's disease and vagus nerve stimulation to the clinically depressed. But unlike CPUs, brain upgrades are still a long way off. That means it's critical that we guard the one brain that we've each been given and optimize its ability to serve us well throughout our entire life-span. After all, as neurologist Dr. Daniel Amen is fond of saying, "Our businesses, governments, communities, and families are run by brains. Shouldn't we understand them?"
Physiological View
From a physiological perspective, the brain mediates a wide array of complex electrical and biochemical processes to maintain homeostasis and respond to stimuli. Hormones and neurotransmitters play key roles in signaling current information to the brain and facilitating execution of the responses that have been directed by the brain. If the physical structures of the brain are viewed as a CPU in a computer, the physiological view of the brain would be represented as the operating system. Operating systems help disparate parts (other computers) communicate.
Human beings have a similar operating system: their brains that help them communicate. Even without words, people can understand others. Dr. Albert Mehrabian at UCLA claimed through his research that only 7 percent of a message is communicated through words; 38 percent is communicated through tone and 55 percent is through body language. Although his research was often misquoted, most of us get the idea that communication is more than just words.
Psychological View
From a psychological perspective, brain functions are central to the mind and critical to the social, behavioral, and cognitive activities that influence people, groups, and societies. The mind is a collection of functions related to perception, interpretation, imagination, and memories, including those that a person is not aware of. The mind is where the ability to dream, to believe, to manage, and to lead resides. Psychology is highly complex and often subjective, but it can't ignore the biological and physiological underpinning any more than an iPhone app can ignore the iOS or the underlying iPhone that it's stored on.
Not only do the underlying physiological and biological functions affect our emotional responses, but how we choose to interact with our world affects the underlying physiological activities and biological structures. This holistic view is often difficult to grasp, as we in Western culture are very comfortable segmenting complexity to get a better understanding. (Medicine and business are good examples.) Unfortunately, we forget to put the whole back together again. This can lead to making a problem worse than it originally was. This is referred to as an iatrogenic effect in medicine, which is when a physician creates the illness. Many management theories are prone to failure because they attempt to ignore the physiology involved and the wholeness of the organization. Leaders can have an iatrogenic effect on the very problems they are trying to solve.
Spiritual View
From a spiritual perspective, science has a long way to go before it will catch up to the ancient understandings. Thanks to technological advancements and scientific curiosity, we are beginning to see scientific confirmation of the effects that energies, spiritualism, and religious beliefs have on our own physical bodies and on each other. Seemingly simple activities like meditation have been shown to have lasting...
