In his bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence, New York Times science reporter Daniel Goleman relates how the pioneering Russian neuropsychologist, A. R. Luria, first suggested in the 1930s that the prefrontal cortex was a key brain center for self-control and restraining emotional impulses.
Luria found that patients with damage to this area “were impulsive and prone to flare-ups of fear and anger.”
A study of two dozen men and women convicted of heat-of-passion murders “found that they had a much lower than usual level of activity in these same sections of the prefrontal cortex.”[1]
In 2002, scientists at Duke University used brain scans to verify that raw emotions interfere with concentration, and that mental focus and raw emotions exist in a mutually exclusive relationship.
That is, not only do raw emotions distort our ability to focus, but deliberately focusing attention is an effective way to calm and “neutralize” those feelings. As the Duke news release put it, “Surprisingly, an increase in one type of function is accompanied by a noticeable decrease in the other.”
This is interesting news for educators, and perhaps also for students preparing to take exams, since it confirms the age-old belief that deliberately focusing attention tends to help calm the pre-test jitters, while uncontrolled emotions are dangerous because they can interfere with concentration and good decision-making.
At Living Wisdom School, the students are taught simple meditation techniques that help them focus their energy and attention in the prefrontal cortex while studying, preparing for tests, and dealing with turbulent emotions.
“We’ve known for a long time that some people are more easily distracted and that emotions can play a big part in this,” said Kevin S. LaBarr, assistant professor at Duke’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and an author of the study described above.
“Our study shows that two streams of processing take place in the brain, with attentional tasks and emotions moving in parallel before finally coming together.” The two streams are integrated in a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate, located between the right and left halves of the brain’s frontal portion, which is involved in a wide range of thought processes and emotional responses.”[2]
It’s easy to test this finding by placing relaxed attention at the area of the anterior cingulate, behind the point between the eyebrows, a practice that tends to soothe troubling emotions by helping us feel more calm, positive, focused, and in control of our feelings.
Researchers now suspect that calm feeling (as distinct from raw emotions) and reason work hand in hand. Contrary to a longstanding prejudice of our western culture, which tends to assume that reason is the superior faculty, the neuroscientists are finding that reason is deeply compromised unless it is balanced by the feelings of the heart.
Neurologist Dr. Antonio Damasio studied patients with damage to the connection between their brains’ prefrontal cortex and amygdala — the two most important centers of reason and emotion in the brain. He found that when these patients lost their ability to feel, they made terrible decisions in their business and personal lives and became incapable of making the simplest decisions, such as when to make an appointment, even though their reasoning powers were intact.
“Dr. Damasio believes their decisions are so bad because they have lost access to their emotional learning…. Cut off from emotional memory in the amygdala, whatever the neocortex mulls over no longer triggers the emotional reactions that have been associated with it in the past — everything takes on a gray neutrality….
“Evidence like this leads Dr. Damasio to the counter-intuitive position that feelings are typically indispensable for rational decisions; they point us in the proper direction, where dry logic can then be of best use.[3]
Clearly, there are risks in trying to make decisions based on feeling alone, because our decisions may be subtly compromised by personal desires and raw emotion — our hearts may not be sufficiently calm and detached to be trusted.
Our feelings are more reliable when we check them against our reason, common sense, and experience. Are our heart’s feelings truly calm and dispassionate, or are we only telling ourselves what we want to hear? Cool, clear reason can help us decide.
Our sense of the right decision will more often be correct when we hold ourselves in a state of calm “reasonable feeling.” It may help to imagine that our awareness is centered in an axis of energy between the forehead and the heart.
At Living Wisdom High School, the students learn to consult their calm feelings while listening to the voice of calm reason. Learning to access and use these important tools gives them an advantage when it comes to mastering the academic curriculum.
Researchers at the Institute of HeartMath have found that it’s surprisingly easy to prove that intuition exists, and that its accuracy increases when we deliberately calm and harmonize our feelings.
In a study of intuitive ability, the subjects were shown soothing images, interspersed randomly with images that were emotionally disturbing. The subjects’ EEG (brain waves), ECG (electrocardiogram), and heart rate variability showed that they reacted emotionally to the images five to seven seconds before an image appeared.
Confirming the folk wisdom that women are more intuitive than men, female subjects reacted with greater accuracy and sensitivity.[4]
The message for students and educators is clear: expansive thoughts, actions, and feelings have been scientifically shown to boost brain efficiency and happiness.
[1]Emotional Intelligence. (New York: Bantam Books, 1995) 314.
[2] Duke University press release, August 19, 2002.
[3] Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books, 1997) 27–28.
[4] “The Sixth Sense—More and More, Science Supports It,” Gabriella Boehmer, Institute of HeartMath; the study referenced is: “Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: Part 1. The Surprising Role of the Heart,” McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., Bradley, R. T., Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Feb 2004, Vol. 10, No. 1: 133–43; “Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: Part 2. A System-Wide Process?” McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., Bradley, R. T., Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Apr 2004, Vol. 10, No. 2: 325–36.