The Promise of The Plastic Mind

Changing the way we think.

Last week I wrote about the implications of what happens to an animal's brain when you teach it to use a rake. I was fascinated and excited by the idea that the brain's genetics may be changed by the way it is used. What might this tell us about our capacity to change the way we think and react?

Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang write today about the brain's limited capacity for governing self-discipline. Research going back several years has shown that if you exercise restraint or self-discipline in one activity or area of your life, you will deplete your "self-restraint" resources and find it more difficult to remain disciplined in another activity. Complete a cross-word puzzle and you won't be able to resist dessert.

The studies implicate blood sugar as an important factor in restoring or maintaining self-restraint. Subjects performed better on disciplined tasks if they were allowed to replenish their blood sugar between those tasks. (If only Spitzer had had a glass of lemonade after a hard day in the legislature!)

But most fascinating for me the research has shown that one can increase one's self-discipline over time by exercising it. This likely (the article says "must") reflects "some biological change in the brain." "Even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity."

David Brooks uses insights from sports psychologist H. A. Dorfman's book The Mental ABC’s of Pitching to argue that the prevailing American emphasis on self-awareness and self-discovery has begun to shift back toward self-discipline and the idea of transcending onesself in one's work. Brooks, not unusually, doesn't provide any kind of specific context for his assertion, but his unearthing of Dorfman's ideas proves a fortuitous coincidence.

Brooks quotes from Dorfman's book: "Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear — and doubt."

Combine this idea with the concept that we can, by exercising willpower and self-discipline, increase our capacity for it, and we have an even more powerful idea: we can choose to free ourselves from habits that inhibit our performance and self-satisfaction.

People, particularly young people, tend to rebel against the idea of excessive self-discipline. Too often the concept is fused with the idea of mindlessness or blind adherence to rules. Discipline can seem antithetical to freedom.

But we can distinguish between a reflexive adherence to habits, rules and regulations and the choice of adherence for the sake of improving self-discpline. One is passive and undirected, the other active and end-directed.

According to Dorfman, and supported by scientific research, it makes no difference whether we feel, in the moment, that we want to exercise self-discipline. If we act in a self-disciplined way we will increase our willpower. Just as we go to the gym to workout, whether we feel like it or not, we might be much more inclined to exercise self-discipline if we understand that it will make it easier for us to exercise more self-discipline in the future.

The same philosophy applies to other brain functions. If macaques and rodents in learning to use a rake exhibit changes in brain DNA, then we can postulate that people can experience changes in brain DNA by stretching the use of our minds.

(This theory comports with common sense (sophisticated mental tasks seem to make people more capable of performing sophisticated mental tasks) and studies that show brain exercise is linked with mental health in later life.)

For more rational, science-based explanations of life's meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.