Encourage Your Brain: Your Brain Has a Delete Button

So this week's Encourage Your Brain comes from a fun Fast Company article with the title of "Your Brain Has a Delete Button. Here's How to Use It." So the upshot of it is that the more we repeat a behavior, the more embedded it becomes, and the neural circuits associated with that behavior get stronger. So practice makes perfect. And then, no surprise, the less that we do something, those circuits actually get snipped while we sleep and that makes them weaker. So the old saying of use it or lose it comes into play, obviously. So here's how the article describes that this process works, and it's called synaptic pruning, and they offer the metaphor of your brain as a garden. So instead of growing fruits and flowers and vegetables, you can grow synaptic connections between the neurons. And there are things called glial cells, G-L-I-A-L cells, that are gardeners in the brain. And some of these glial cells, as we're sleeping or napping, are waste removers. They sort of end up pulling up weeds or they rake up dead leaves and kind of just clean and tidy things. So they snip and they prune these synaptic connections. The question becomes, how do you know which ones to prune? How do the glial cells know this? And it turns out that it's determined by what we're using or not using. So the things that we're not using actually get marked by a particular protein, and as the glial cells come through at night, they see that protein, they bind to it, and poof, it disintegrates, snips that neural connection. So we could go into the importance about sleep and naps and that sort of thing at this point. Save that for another day. So the question then arises as to what is getting the most attention in the brain because that is what is not going to get pruned. So what gets the most attention won't get pruned. So it turns out we do have some control over what the brain decides to delete while we sleep. So if we spend a lot of time replaying an embarrassing moment at work or something like that, that's going to get reinforced and not snipped. Even if we're thinking about figuring out how to deal with that embarrassing moment, like something that's worrisome, or let's say figuring out how to get through a big challenge, whether it's a workload or relationship or a financial sort of concern, health concern, those glial gardeners in the brain are going to see that those synapses have been used recently and not prune them. And the problem in that, even though we feel like, hey, I'm trying to solve it, I'm trying to think through it, is that if there's this sort of sense of red zone about it it then tells the brain, "I have a problem. I've got danger. I've got threat," something to that degree, so that the connections that say problem, problem, problem are reinforced. So the way out of this is to be thinking about things that will serve you in solving the problem. It's a subtle shift from, "Yikes, this situation is troublesome," to, "Hmm, I can use my strength of strategic or empathy or Woo to take this action. Or, wow, I'm grateful I'm mastering this new skill to take this action. So now the brain is focusing on strengths and sort of an abundance mentality. So when we focus on the solution and not the problem, we can turn into synaptic superstars. Go encourage your brain.