2023-09-26 18:00:00
Understanding our brain is, in part, enhancing our well-being, realizing how we can use our body as part of our preventive medicine, a very revolutionary method.
According to Antonio Damásio, a renowned neuroscientist and neurologist of Portuguese origin, he maintains a phrase that summarizes this theory from the beginning, which says: “The body already knows what the brain has not yet realized.”
When we look at all those stimuli that reach us through our senses, such as our vision, all that information passes through various parts of our brain, until finally all that journey reaches the cerebral cortex where it becomes conscious. , that is why it is said that my body has found out before what I perceive, since our mind is part of our conscious side in ourselves.
From the beginning we know that our senses are five: smell, hearing, taste, vision, and touch. Through neuroscience, it lets us know that we have two more senses, in order of importance, the first being interoception, which gives us an idea of how our vital organs are, it is that information that reaches our brain with data on how our organs are. The second sense that we have added, in importance, is proprioception, this is the information that reaches the brain regarding how my body is, here we are referring to posture. We clarify that our five sensory senses help us interpret what we see, feel, for example, if a hand is touched, by touch, or what we hear, taste and smell, they will help these two senses to complete the information they receive. Our brain. This information is received by the receptors we have in our body, and through the spinal cord, it reaches the brain.
The important thing is that we understand that in our brain our entire body is represented as a map and that, for example, if they touch our finger, that information is transmitted through the spinal cord and reaches a region of the brain, which is specific to that finger. . Then there is a representation of the body in the brain that is represented in an area called somatosensory, this area arises from the front to the ears, which covers the entire head, as if it were a headband that holds the hair, it is thin and surrounds up to reach the other side of the hemisphere, that is, it covers from the right side to the left. This is where our body is represented, it is very finite and if we go deeper into the brain, we will find the insula, which is that area that interprets “who I am”, and is subject to the idea of identity.
Our brain interprets these details, in that part of the cerebral cortex called the insula, and where the information regarding who I am is fused, through my body posture, identified in this mental structure. That is, in order for my brain to know who I am, it needs to have an overview of how my body is at the moment.
But if we look, in this representation in the somatosensory cortex, the brain has that representation of our body. Since 1952, it was seen that the body is not represented in proportion to the size of the body area it represents, that is, there are parts of the body that the brain gives much more importance, for example the back, no matter how large it may be, It does not have more neurons dedicated to identifying it.
The most important is the hand, especially the big finger, this lever movement that the hand exercises with so many forms of use in its motor skills, which has been the cause of the evolution of the prefrontal cortex in the days of primitive man, Therefore, the usefulness of the hand and its shapes has been related to its cerebral interpretation.
On the other hand, also of great importance, in the brain map, is the face, our face, that is, the number of neurons that are processed to want to know what I feel in my hand and on my face is eighty percent. percent of the total neurons that are dedicated to the body, the rest of the body is important but less important for this somatosensory area.
From here, in the fifties, a representation was born that is a little man who has big hands and a huge face compared to his other parts of the body, which was called: Penfield’s Homunculus, which highlights the most important areas in the sensory aspect. and another in the motor area. The brain perceives with more details what it gives more importance to.
The hands, the mouth and their contours in addition to the contours of the eyes are the most important for this representation in the brain, this is for everyone equally, both a Japanese and a Spaniard. The difference in cultures lies in the fact that, for example, an Italian has more developed hand motor skills and that will give more accurate information regarding this culture in the brain, but in general, hands and faces are the most important in brain representation.
From here comes the neuroscientific interpretation of why, for our brain, it is so important to smile, the power of realizing what our face is like, in order to influence our mood. For example, if my face is frowning, my brain will evoke the emotions that characterize that emotional state that is similar to being angry.
The University of Los Angeles is studying how it affects the gesture that we usually have, when we look at the notebook all day, or when we spend a lot of time looking at the cell phone, because the time we spend interacting with this technology in our hands is increasing. . It is true that most of the time we have to wrinkle our brow, or tense the nerves of the eye muscles, to read a message on the mobile screen and that is where we fix our gaze. It also forces us to look down and if we look, we are using our big toe in a repetitive and unnatural way, that is, that posture we acquire when we are with our cell phone affects the representation of our body in the brain, which is why look how important it is.
In scientific studies from 1948, the representation of the body in our brain began to be studied and it was learned that the brain knows more regarding how the body is, but depending on how it is, it knows how it should act. The information regarding how my body is is not passive, it is a binding relationship, since that information received is considered to know what it has to face.
In current studies from 2022, it is verified and stated that, with neuroscientific advances: “Everything that is represented in the somatosensory cortex is what our brain accounts for.””, how the body is and how I am moving it will give information to our brain. This somatosensory area takes care of what it perceives very well, breaking down everything we perceive into different attributes such as color, smell, sound, textures, movement, and then fusing everything we see and feel around us, integrating it. as part of how my body is, with these attributes.
To understand this concept more I am going to quote William James one of the founders of Psychobiology, who argues his theory by saying: “Emotion is the awareness of bodily changes activated by stimuli, if bodily changes are not felt, there will only be an intellectual thought, lacking emotional warmth” and “To refuse to express an emotion is to die.”
That is why William James, American philosopher and psychologist with a long and brilliant career at Harvard University, states his theory with the following phrase: “I don’t cry because I’m sad, I’m sad because I cry.”
When the brain computes an experience in addition to the analytical one, that is, the data that it processes in intellectual thought, for example: I earned a promotion at my job, the brain completes the experience by also adding the data of the emotions that are perceived in the body, for example, joy and happiness, which is translated with what happens to us in the body, as the other important part, which adds relevant information, to complete that emotional experience, and is reflected in our body, when receiving that news.
Learning to recognize in our body, the sensations, and the response to each emotion, knowing how it is?, with what emotion?, allows us to make better decisions. Identifying how my body is is knowing how we are.
According to Antonio Damásio, it does not tell us where to go, but rather where we are and how we are, to then know where we have to go, for this we should develop our body awareness, that is, if I am sad, identify where I feel that sadness, like any other emotion that is reflected in our body, are like somatic markers and we do not realize it; sometimes we don’t even realize it.
The moment we become aware of doing a body scan and go through the sensations from head to toe, we will become more aware of how we feel those emotions in it, and as a result we will know the body state at all times, and It will give us greater help by knowing how we feel before making a decision.
We cannot understand our feelings, opinions and actions with our intellect alone, we must also look at our body and environment.
Body position influences memory, as does the importance of posture in cognition and emotion. We will be able to remember more numbers of negative words if we are in a leaning or hunched position, looking down; On the other hand, if we are upright we will remember more positive words in our brain.
This is evidenced in an experiment that was done in 2014 by telling a young woman to sit looking at a computer that was on the floor, there they gave her a list of words, with that hunched posture, similar to a sad person who uses the same body shape, it was evident that fewer words were remembered when closing the computer, all the words remembered in general were of a negative nature. In another evaluation, the same girl was subjected to a chair sitting upright with the computer at eye level, and the words that were remembered in that list were many more compared to the previous one, and they were mostly positive words; This is because posture affects cognition and memory capacity is lost. It repeatedly happens to all of us, when we are working in front of the switch and we are hunching forward or we also spend hours in front of the cell phone, with our head tilted looking down, and pointing at the screen, without realizing that we are fixating our eyes or closing our eyes. frown to be able to read those tiny words, and that we cannot read, therefore, the brain interprets the body with a low mood and this emotional state of anxiety and tiredness has an impact on our cognition, altering our energies of attention, creativity and memory, which is very significant in the development of learning.
It has also been shown that body position influences the endocrine system; in a position of superiority, for example, with the arms crossed behind the head, holding it at the height of the neck, the production of testosterone and cortisol increases, decreasing this production when the person is in a body position of submission, shyness or inferiority, for example, with arms crossed in a conversation.
Then we realize that we can use our body for our benefit as another tool, that is what we have for our mental health, and thus, pacify our face or correct our posture. On the contrary, if we are already upset, we can avoid some postures that aggravate or help cortisol rise, and generate altered emotional states, increasing, for example, anger, with higher levels, to which we already have at that time.
Use our body as a control strategy to enhance calm or well-being. For this reason, it can be said that it is easier to reach the interpretation of our brain from the body than from our own thoughts. Changing posture, and learning to breathe, has much more impact than shaping thoughts, which are of course useful, but for this, an introspective look is needed, constantly and consciously, from the person who uses this resource, examining your own thoughts.
For this reason we must know how to contemplate and observe ourselves, to then be able to develop the correction of posture, this without analyzing ourselves, because analyzing ourselves would already be having a judgment as to why one thing or another happens to us.
We will always talk regarding observing ourselves in an equanimous manner without judgment, and we will discover some things that are always pleasant to us.
The mental state most of the time tends to wander, that is, to wander, going from one topic to another. That is why it is said that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, causing in our days a constant feeling of discomfort or dissatisfaction, just like our body, in a state of bodily unconsciousness, will go looking for positions or gestures that we then have to correct. or move away from their upright position.
In order to quiet this wandering of our mind, we can anchor it as a single key, in our breathing, that tool that allows us voluntary control of attention, observation of the sensations that breathing produces in us. This process that we can access with breathing is by observing how we breathe, since it has been discovered that through a brain structure called pre-bötzinger complex, which tells our brain how we are breathing, in such a way, that, if we breathe in one way or another, we access a different structure in our brain. This influences memory, attention and the processing of emotions.. Breathing deeply and slowly produces an analgesic effect on our brain.
Furthermore, developing awareness of our body posture does not mean constantly observing our posture, but rather our body will already warn us that we are hunched or hunched over, and the importance of observing our breathing gives us the idea of modifying an emotion, improving attention and our memory.
Finally we will be training control, having a conscious, voluntary, and free idea of where our attention goes.
According to Williams James, he tells us, attention is the control of the mind, what we pay attention to represents our reality. Having more control of where our attention goes, and with the help of breathing, we will realize that we put energy into what we focus on with our mind, in this way we will inhabit our body and mind. From this perspective, a phrase from Williams James emerges, which says: “To live is to learn to care.”
To the extent that we observe the body, its posture, we will give that information to the brain, and from there emotions will be triggered according to how we are physically, in addition to feeding cognitive attention and our memory.
Our well-being depends on knowing how to inhabit our body and mind.
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