Understanding The Brain

When discussing the power of the mind and mind management, several parts and functions of the brain are crucial to understand.  Having good Mind Health involves having a fully integrated brain, one that is working optimally for you at all times. 

With its vast interconnected networks and regions, it is often difficult to understand how the brain works and how the different parts collaborate to shape our thoughts, emotions, and actions. I have attempted to simplify certain parts and functions of the brain into an easy to understand guide below. 

Right and Left Hemispheres

At its core, the brain is divided into two hemispheres, each with distinct functions:

Left Hemisphere: This side of the brain is logical, verbal, analytical and linear. It loves and wants order. It puts things in sequential order and it loves lists (so do I!)

Right Hemisphere: This side of the brain is holistic, nonverbal, and focuses on emotions and personal memories. It cares about the big picture and the meaning and feeling of an experience. Gut feelings come from this side of the brain. 

These two sides of the brain are connected by the Corpus Callosum, which is a bundle of fibers that runs along the center of the brain. This connection results in effective functioning of the two sides of the brain, allowing communication and integration of their respective functions. When your brain is not integrated, it can result in either rigidity (left brain) or total chaos (right brain). The goal is to be somewhere in the middle. 

When we rely too much on the left side of our brain we can deny our emotions and become too literal, leaving us without a sense of perspective, where we miss the meaning that comes from putting things in context.  

When we rely too much on the right side of the brain we can become disorganized and fail to pay attention to details. We may be unable to focus on one task at a time and might tend to procrastinate. 

Our job is to figure out what’s going on in our child’s brain: are they using their left or right side at the moment? Then we can try to bring them back to integration. 

Upper and Lower Brain

The brain is further divided into an upper brain and a lower brain.

Upper Brain (Prefrontal Cortex)

This part of the brain handles executive functions like decision-making, problem solving, planning, and emotional control.  The executive brain region integrates information from other brain areas and guides behavior based on analysis and evaluation.

I like to think of our prefrontal cortex as our brains workshop. It takes in information and organizes and synthesizes it all allowing you to make something out of it by way of ideas and thoughts. WIthout it, all the information would just sit there and nothing would get done with it. Think of a typical workshop, you can buy all kinds of supplies and they can pile up in all corners of the workshop but if no one knows how to make or build anything with the supplies, nothing will get made. That is like the information in our brains, which is why the prefrontal cortex is so important. 

Executive functions allow us to see things from different points of view and consider alternative options. They start during preschool years and are not fully developed until young adulthood, which is why children tend to see things as black or white.

Lower Brain (Brainstem, Limbic System)

This part of the brain is responsible for basic functions, strong emotions, and fight-or-flight responses.

The amygdala (a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain) is part of the limbic system.  It is like the watchdog of the brain. Its job is to detect danger and quickly process and express emotions. Like a good watchdog, it is always on the lookout for danger or threatening situations. The problem is that the amygdala has the ability to block integration. 

Here is how it works. We all know that stress can cause anxiety. Well anxiety, in turn, can affect how our brain functions. When you're continually anxious, your amygdala gets bigger and becomes hypersensitive. Again, as the watchdog, it stays on the lookout for potential dangers. It then alerts your hypothalamus to what is happening, potentially triggering a fight for flight response. The problem is that sometimes these threats are merely perceived and not real and an overactive amygdala tends to send out false alarms. Those are the times when you act before thinking, which may be good if you are in real danger but not when it is just perceived. 

The amygdala also links your emotions to many other brain abilities, especially memories, learning and your senses.

For example, your sense of smell connects directly to the amygdala, and therefore, scents in your home can help reduce anxiety and even lift your mood (there’s a reason realtors bake cookies right before a house showing)

Another part of the limbic system is the Hippocampus, which acts as a memory search engine. When the amygdala activates our flight or fight response, it also signals the hippocampus to store memories of the fearful event so we can avoid similar threats in the future.

As the memory search engine, the hippocampus collaborates with various brain areas to merge images, emotions, and sensations from implicit memory into coherent "pictures" for our explicit understanding of past experiences. 

I like to think of the Hippocampus as your computer’s photo manager. It assembles the scattered pieces of implicit memory into a cohesive whole, just like the photo manager organizes your photos by date or event. Without this integration, these memories remain disjointed, influencing our perception of reality and our sense of self. Imagine what our computer photo library would look like with years of disorganized photos. It would be very difficult to piece together what happened during an event. 

Anxiety can cause your brain to hold onto negative memories and emotions. Stress shrinks the hippocampus. When your hippocampus gets smaller, it becomes harder to hold onto memories and causes negative memories to override positive ones. 

I love this analogy. In the book The Whole Brain Child, by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., the authors compare the upper and lower parts of the brain to the parts of a house. The Upstairs Brain is like a second floor library full of windows and skylights that allow you to see things more clearly. This is the place of thinking, imagining and planning. The Downstairs Brain is like the downstairs part of your house where the kitchen, dining room and bathroom are located. These areas take care of the basic necessities. 

Integration of these areas ensures emotional stability and thoughtful decision-making. That means the upstairs can monitor the actions of the downstairs and help calm the strong reactions, impulses and emotions that originate there. The brain must also get input from the downstairs brain before the upstairs brain makes decisions. The goal is to build and reinforce a staircase between the two so that they can work together. 

How the Nervous System Works - Learning and Memory

The nervous system is made up of the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system:  The brain and the spinal cord are the central nervous system. The nerves that go through the whole body make up the peripheral nervous system.

The nervous system is dependent upon tiny cells, called neurons, that relay information to each other, making connections that affect the way we think, learn, move, and behave. 

Each time we learn something, messages are sent from one neuron to another, creating a pathway with this specific information. Once a pathway has become established (like a well-worn path or grooves in a dirt road), this information becomes deeply rooted in our brain and activities associated with this neural pathway become second nature (like riding a bike).  As we age, it's harder for the brain to make new neural pathways and to change ones that have been there for a long time. 

Memory is another area that can make neural pathways. Your brain processes what you experience and learn in the cortex. If something seems important to remember forever, it goes to other parts like the hippocampus and amygdala. These parts help keep memories long-term and bring them back when needed. This process creates pathways in your brain that help with memory.

Also involved in learning and memory is the Semantic Network, which is basically a web of knowledge of everything you know. Your brain will consciously or subconsciously find connections to everything that happens to you with everything else in your mind. The semantic network shapes our perceptions and understanding of the world as it weaves together our knowledge and experiences.

With all of this information coming into our brain through learning and experiences, our brain needs a way to filter it all so that we get only the information we need or want. Enter the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS filters out all the information thrown at us based on our priorities and goals, which, in turn, influences our perception and cognitive processing. 

What we think about and say is what we are telling our brain to look for. It’s like putting something into a google search. What you think and say goes in the search bar and then what you see and notice are the search results. Imagine if we did not have such a filter? The average American consumes over 70 gigabytes of data & information every day (which is roughly equivalent to 16 movies)! I am exhausted just thinking about it. 

While there are many, many more parts and functions of the brain, the information discussed above will help you understand how some of them work together to help us process information, regulate emotions and form memories. Integration and communication between these areas are essential for balanced cognitive and emotional functioning, which is our goal for our children (and ourselves). 

Understanding how different parts of the brain function is crucial in helping children manage their minds effectively. It allows us to provide guidance that aligns with how children naturally learn and retain knowledge; helps us teach children strategies to manage their feelings effectively, promoting emotional well-being and resilience; helps us create learning environments that optimize retention and recall; and enables us to implement strategies that encourage positive behaviors and self-control, fostering healthy habits and decision-making. A healthy mind supports a healthy child.