Well, you know I hope the book will be
useful for people and of interest. >>What message do you hope people will take
away from the book? >> I think there are really two messages
One is that there are these
variations
in emotional style
and there is no style that's best
and thats message one. Different styles are more well suited to certain people
in certain environments. And the second message is that if
a person finds that his emotional style isn't working
well for them, there are actually things that are in their power
to change them, and its worth a try.
>>Absolutely. >>So those are really the two most important messages.
>>I mean both of those messages strike me as cutting against the grain of a lot of popular assumptions
about how the mind works and my sense is
there is this craving among a lot of people
or just in society in general that we assume that there is just one particular kind of mind
one ideal template for human nature, and if you deviate from that, you deserve
a diagnosis
and what interests me is that all the different ways
just out of your message that whether its different styles of emotional regulation
or even if its just different styles of thinking whether its
that paper that came out last week that said those with autism, adults with autism
showed much higher bandwidth with informational processing
so to be on this very very difficult task
, I took a sample of it online
I couldn't track these letters being flashed very quickly and you got to monitor this gray squiggle outside the box
you give me enough letters and I'm just overwhelmed
Those with autism could handle twice as much information as me. so even this disorder that we assume
, a lot of people assume is just a deviation
its just a different style of thinking with its pluses and minuses
>>Exactly, and in the book, I talk about autism as an example and one of the emotional styles
of dimensions I call social intuitions
which is about the accuracy of decoding non verbal cues of emotion
facial expression, tone of voice, body posture
and there are
a significant fraction of those on the autism spectrum that do poorly on that
but you know those are people who may actually prefer
to interact with a machine
and they can do enormously well
and we need people like that
>>Absolutely and you look at dyslexia
and there's interesting evidence that people with dyslexia have better peripheral perception
and better at the visual gist, and one of the studies I talk about in my book
is those with ADHD and people who score
on lower levels with latent inhibition so they're more distractible
They score higher on real world tests of creative achievement
We're so good at pigeon holding people and to give them
a diagnosis and to treat that difference, but I think its a very important message to get across
to get across to people, that the pluralism
of human nature is a tremendous asset.
Do you think people are surprised by how much they can change their
affective or cognitive style? >> I think for people
to try that on as a possibility, I think they are, initially.
We have data showing that two weeks
of training, 30 minutes a day
is sufficient to produce behavioral and neural changes
in otherwise complete novice individuals.
>>We're not taking the full 10,000 hours of practice here. >>We're not taking the10,000 hours exactly
>>Did that result surprise you that it didn't take that much
that we are such masses of wet clay that an hour a day for two weeks --
>> A half an hour for two weeks
but you know people often ask me
do those changes last?
And I ask them if you're someone who
hasn't done physical exercise, and then exercise two weeks, 30 minutes a day
you would probably feel different but
certainly if you stopped exercising, its not going to last
and I don't think these effects are going to last.
>>Well plasticity is a double-edge sword it means you can change it
also means you have to work to maintain that change
>>Exactly, the hope is the work with children will provide kids with
skills that will become lifelong habits
they are techniques that they can invoke at whatever
times they need them and they can just
use this on a regular basis
and it really becomes part of the delivery too
>>Is that where you see a lot of your research directed towards
younger children simply because
its by giving them habits which don't even require
the conscious intervention
the conscious interference of interactions?
>>Yeah in part, you know Im someone who
I think forever will have a difficult time
completely narrowing my focus, but everything we do in one way or another
is related to emotion attention in the brain
and with an unswerving focus on
individual differences, that is differences among other people
but within that, theres just a lot going on
and we're very interested in
how these circuits in the brain interact with the body
>>We were talking about William James before
I have no doubt that if he'd be around he would be closely following your research
if not working side by side in the lab. >>Well he's certainly a hero of mine. >>Me too.
I mean William James always reminds me of one of my favorite line of his is
my first act of free will is to believe in free will, and I think one of the ironies
is, I don't know if irony is the right word here
is-- you know he's a neuroscientist using very rigorous methods
of studying these three pounds of meat inside our heads and he must associate neuroscience with somehow
the solution of free will
that if we can understand the brain we will just realize that we are just automatons acting out circuitry, and yet,
I think that your research is such an important reminder that in the end,
we can control our attention, we can get better at controlling our attention, I mean do you ever think about, I know these are
very grandiose questions I know, do you think about free will in the context
of your research? >> Yes you know I defiantly have and you know I certainly
think that our work is very relevant to that and clearly suggests
that we really are capable
of changing our brains by transforming our minds
and it really has to do with free will, so
and I think that there is actually some
specific neuroscience research that is really interesting and relevant to this
and I think that one of the problems with certain kinds of psychopathology
particularly certain kinds of depression
in an abnormality in the will
and so the willingness to change is actually impaired
and I think this is reflected in
reflected in abnormalities in the interior cerebral
>> So this is just plugging into kind of rumination
and you get stuck in this recursive loop? >>Exactly
and it turns out that there's quite a few
papers in literature, some from us and some from other groups showing
with a variety of different kinds of treatments
that pre-treatment interior cingulate activity
predicts treatment response in patients with depression
And I think
a lot of this has to do with this issue of
the will to change, and I think
there is something that the interior cingulate
is reflecting something in the will to change and no matter what kind of treatment
you're giving a patient with depression
they have to believe in it, and they have to believe that
change is possible or else change isn't going to happen
>>And its also just in terms of -- you know obviously people have identified with the ACC in terms of intentional switching
and cognitive control. >> And conflict monitoring . >> And its almost as if you
get stuck in this cycle of
rumination and you can't break out, you can't step out
side it, you can't move the spotlight somewhere else. >>that's right
and I think that in terms conflict monitoring one of the things that I think about with a patient of depression is
there's a conflict between, when a patient is depressed, between
demands and expectations of everyday life
and current mood state, and part of change
is actually registering that as a conflict
and if you don't register that as a conflict
then there is no impulse to change
and so I think that the interior cingulate finding
is in part about that. >> I mean do you see that as
I mean does it give you hope for potential
talk therapies, or means of modulating the interior cingulate
without having to take a pill?
>> Yes definitely, I think definitely
and you know, again-- its one of the things that I talk about
and I mentioned it in the book,
is this concept of neurally-inspired behavioral interventions
so developing behavioral interventions based upon the knowledge of the brain
and when you think about the behavioral interventions that exist,
and not to denigrate them
they're useful but they have not been developed with an understanding of the brain
and we are now at the point where we can begin to really
develop interventions based on knowledge of the brain
and I thing this whole issue of the will is an extremely important
one because we can actually give people
some simple experiences to actually give them a taste
of what it means to be in control and to exercise
control. >> could you give us an example?
>> Well I'm not exactly sure
what flavoring it would be but
even things that are as simple as
regulating your attention, so you can actually show
a person that if they direct their attention
one set of cues, they'll actually
pick up certain things that they missed if their attention is not directly
in passing, and you use examples
of change blindness and actually instruct people that if you
pay attention to certain things, you actually --
>> and this also reminds me of some of your work with patients struggling with PTSD in terms of
modulating their breath, modulating their heart rate and
controlling their effective response realizing that
you can veer your attention, mediate
what you feel these visceral changes in your body
>> Exactly, I think that's another route to it
and I think thats a way of tweaking this circuit behaviorally, now I don't think it's going to be again
I don't think everyone will respond
but certainly given the alternatives
I think its worth a try and there are very few side-effects. >>Absolutely
its just fascinating to think about neuroscience and performing
talk therapy, just our knowledge of the brain allowing us to change it via the mind
>> Right and the other thing is when you think about it from the perspective of neuroscience
the idea of talk therapy, of going to someone for 45 minutes a week
and thinking that we can actually produce
behavioral change that way is lunacy, I mean it is just complete lunacy
I mean it's such a cockamamie idea >>Well I always thought of talk therapy in
terms of memory consolidation that if you really want to come up with a
reductionist justification it would be that the act of
remembering the memory changes the memory itself that memory is an iterative process
so maybe you can make the case that you're taking these upsetting memories
these traumatic memories and you're recalling them in a safe place.
but certianly
I think everyone should agree that these are techniques
that we can improve by incorporating this new knowledge
>>Right but part of it has to do with regularity of practice
and thats something from the meditation work
that I think is relevant to all other kinds of training
and its certainly the case with musical training
and sports training, any kind of training where real expertise
is being cultivated, everyone understands that
>>I mean that is one of the most proactive messages about your book
that happiness, as you put it, is a skill,
its like anything else, we can get better at
that we have a talent for emotional regulation
and we have to work at that talent we have to work at that skill, its a craft and
you have to put in the hours of deliberate practice and even though we are always in the midst of these moods
we can influence them, and I think thats a pretty powerful message.