On brain balance, overthinking, attention, and a basin
For quite a while I have been thinking about different ideas, such as the balance of the brain, the thoughts that go round and round and the capacity to pay attention. A few days ago I woke up with a need to write about all this. Right after sending the kids to school, I started typing on the computer to see if anything made sense.
After spending some time banging on the keyboard, I realised that all these thoughts needed to come out, perhaps to restore the balance. This article is about biology, brain homeostasis, thoughts, attention and tailoring a story, with a metaphor included.
What is brain homeostasis?
Video: Neurons, neural plasticity, and other phenomena.
There are 100 to 200 billion neurons in the brain, and billions of accompanying cells. All these cells communicate constantly. Each of them, in turn, contains billions of molecules of different sizes:
DNA strands in their nucleus, the cells' library, with 20,000 genes and other sequences whose function is still under study.
Structural proteins work as building bricks, and functional proteins as little machines that perform one — or several — tasks.
Fats and sugars to feed and shape them.
Small molecules, such as neurotransmitters, ions, oxygen, or water, with specific functions, such as communicating, obtaining energy and many others.
The whole system is exquisitely regulated. Some of these processes are even connected, in the sense that many of these molecules perform more than one function, or serve as a meeting point for a few of these processes. It is as if some workers in a company perform a specific job, while others multitask. It is a true miracle, and such a wonder the different ways each brain works, even though they are all so similar.
This swarm of cells, molecules, and processes maintains a balance while allowing fluctuations. This means, for example, that there are constant increases and decreases in some of its components, and the system absorbs these fluctuations, generating a kind of elastic behaviour, in which equilibrium is restored. This is the idea of cerebral homeostasis. What would help to understand this?
The water basin
I like to represent brain homeostasis, in the same way as that of the whole body, with the following: let's imagine a square blue plastic basin, the one we use to put wet clothes from the washing machine. Let's fill it half full of water, and place in upside down a few tube glasses, like the ones used for cocktails.
In this imagery experiment, we can think about pushing one of the upside-down glasses, which causes the water level to change. We can push several of the glasses. If we then release them, they return to their previous state. But if we press too many, the water level will spill over the basin’s edge. An imbalance of the internal homeostasis of the brain occurs, which can lead to an incapacitating situation. We would then move from the idea of homeostatic equilibrium to disease.
The origin of fluctuations and their impact
In both health and illness, the brain responds to external stimuli, generates a change within itself, and coordinates a response to the outside of the body. It is like a black box: we know what goes in —the stimulus— and what comes out—the behaviour/movement. But we don't understand what goes on in there, considering that only each one of the 100-200 million neurons works as a tiny computer.
We researched that the environment plays a more pivotal role in how the brain functions than the genetic information it contains. We also know that Nature is wise, and the brain, as a representation of a little piece of Nature, has proper compensatory mechanisms. Its natural tendency is to re-establish internal homeostasis and to adapt.
But the brain is constantly changing. For example, in the visual cortex of macaque monkeys, 7% of the synaptic buttons—where the neurons are connected—turn over every week. All these wires are continuously reconnected and shape new circuits. This phenomenon occurs until the same stimulus that enters the black box at a given moment, which generates a response, creates a different one. These ideas represent the biological concepts of neuronal plasticity and learning. So, for learning to take place, it is crucial to have an external excuse, and to pay attention to it.
An excuse to pay attention
When there are no external stimuli the brain starts to think, and then to wander. In other words, if there is no excuse for movement or behaviour, the energy that enters the brain externally is trapped in the brain, reverberating within. The usual outcome is starting to cyclically jump through a set of mental sequences and fantasy, which are close-looped and seemingly logical, that lead nowhere but to consume energy resources that the body—and the brain—need. The excuse to stop it is a stimulus through our senses, such as hearing someone speaking or seeing an image.
For stimuli to enter the brain, it is necessary to pay attention to things. Attention is an innate cognitive capacity in the brain and requires numerous internal resources, such as those indicated at the beginning of this short essay—cells and molecules —. In the face of many external stimuli or stimuli that last a long time, our attention is limited, so we are at risk of not producing any kind of movement, and doing nothing. All the energy remains trapped in the brain, and we need to allow flowing it out.
There are different strategies to work out our attention. Many have to do with the relationship of what we do in a given moment with our body, our senses, and the emotions we experience. For example, here are 5:
Writing by hand in a personal notebook: a free and direct writing style, avoiding thinking
Drawing a picture without preparing it, just starting on the blank paper, guided by intuition
Doing puzzles, crosswords, sudokus, etc.
Playing sports/physical activity
Meditating/deep breathing
These are ways to channel all that trapped energy in the brain, which generates thoughts that are growing, circulating in our head, and taking different forms of more or less clear visual or verbal representations. Not to be confused with imagination, which may be a more guided process. We can focus the resources on being attentive to what is happening right in front of us.
I hope the end of the day will come with a different feeling to being hit by a steamroller, and we can gradually restore this delicate balance, avoiding the unnecessary discomfort we usually bring to our pillows. By the way, having a good sleep is one of the great brain mechanisms for its restoration, although this is another story, which perhaps can be written elsewhere.
