Article: How Travels Make Our Brains Work Productively

in #life6 years ago

Change scenery - a short trip - reboots the system and shakes off the touch of automatism. It's easy to check on the return - the effect of the new does not leave us on passport control, and, at least for the first time, we perceive the familiar familiar space as changed.

Shklovsky would call this a detachment that allows one to look at what is customary as the Other and to break out of the bonds of an obsolete perception.

During the journey, the novelty of the environment - sounds, smells, tastes, sensations - makes our synapses, small intervals, connecting neurons and serving to filter out "noise" (useless information coming from outside) are actively plowed. For an electrical impulse to jump from one neuron to another, a technologically intricate procedure is required, but each subsequent transmission passes better and better: our brain puffs, but gradually learns. Synaptic connections, fixing successful and unsuccessful experience, are formed on the basis of the tortured-experienced - either through repeated repetition and gradual training (as in the case of a foreign language), or through a momentary emotional shake-up.

That's why the change of scenery can easily and quickly reboot the system, but for serious and long-term use it is not enough, no matter how nice it is to disconnect from the routine and lie on a chaise lounge at the bar with suspiciously tasteless alcohol (but "all inclusive"). Immersion in the Other should be expanded and deepened, turning novelty into an inexhaustible source of experience, which includes both gradual learning and emotional whirlwinds. That is, turning the new environment into an enriched one.
Experimental studies in animals show that the enriched environment, that is filled with additional or complicating life lotions, allows laboratory rats and monkeys to grow and develop faster, to respond more adequately to stress, to study more effectively and increase the mass and thickness of the cerebral cortex.

The same works for people.

Wendy Suzuki, Ph.D. and head of the interactive research laboratory at New York University, in her simple and fascinating guide to neuroplasticity describes how a trip abroad can become an ideal enriched environment on the example of her trip to France. Her analogue "Eat, Pray, Love" included studying a new field of science, mastering French and playing piano (gradual learning), and more fascinating things like a romance with a Parisian and getting used to the fact that the French constantly kiss, perceive Asians as exotic and on the whole seriously differ from Americans (emotional shake-up). "As I changed my behavior and experienced new sensations, my brain adjusted to fresh information and new irritants," Suzuki was delighted with.

Deep cultural integration (starting with the study of local cuisine and ending with the habit of kissing in public places) seriously suited the development of her brain.
For example, regular trips to the tasting of cheeses and wines, that is, the expansion of the olfactory-taste spectrum, according to Suzuki's own assumption, contributed to the growth of new neuronal cells (according to studies, adults have only two brain regions where neurogenesis - the hippocampus and olfactory bulb is still possible, Also involved in the formation of taste sensations).

In addition to purely physiological bonuses, such integration also provides more visible advantages. According to Adam Galinsky, the author of studies on the relationship between creativity and international travel, adaptation to a new culture "increases cognitive flexibility (the ability to switch between ideas), integrates thought and the ability to establish deep connections between forms." Studies of European students show that Europeans were more active in generating unconventional ideas and better perceived new ones within 5-7 days after "overdosing" the traditional culture of America and China.

Another nice bonus of adaptation is the ability to self-regulation. Understand the rules of intuitive driving on Asian roads, cope with the blow of fate in the form of jumps in the euro rate and the rapidly disappearing budget, plan the program for the next week and accept that the idea is useless and utopian - even small household "challenges" teach us independence and self-control.
The brain regions responsible for these and other "managerial" functions are in close contact with the zones responsible for the functioning of our mind. In other words, the more our ability to self-leadership is pumped, the more productively we think.

Self-monitoring helps develop not only normal but also emotional intelligence (EI) - so the American psychologist Daniel Goleman denoted our ability to recognize one's own and others' emotions, differentiate feelings and learn emotional flexibility, and use information about emotions to guide thinking and behavior. According to Goleman's theory, EI more than IQ affects the quality of life and professional success (especially in terms of leadership). The theory is still considered controversial, but no one denies the power and significance of emotional intelligence. Self-control, according to Goleman, is one of the key points for the development of EI along with social skills, empathy and motivation. All three positions "under the noise" are worked out in any more or less active travel. As well as the general emotional state.

Short-term trips like holidays help to get rid of stress: according to studies, women who have a rest less than once in two years are more likely to suffer from depression and stress than those who rest at least twice a year. Stress, often accompanying our daily life, acts on the brain like a hangover after drinking, that is, it does not have the best effect on higher mental functions, such as learning, attention, memory and concentration. Long-term nervous tension beats the hippocampus, responsible for emotions and memory consolidation. One round to throw off both that and another - already means to raise working capacity of a brain and to support to the happiness.

Unlike the package tour or a trip to Rosa Khutor to eat shish kebabs against the backdrop of snowy slopes, long-term trips - studying abroad, running half of the world with a backpack and foam over the shoulders, participating in volunteer programs - may themselves be stressful. But they, as we found out, contribute to the development of our cognitive abilities - the main characters in the process of evaluating reactions. Cognitive theory views stress as the perception of an external stimulus in the form of a threat. According to this theory, it is precisely from our attitudes and cognitive mobility that we decide whether we will perceive anything as a threat.

Changing cognitive attitudes from negative to positive and from protective to conducive to openness is as much a side effect of long travel as burned shoulders, a bunch of stories and a logbook for descendants.

A close and sufficiently long acquaintance with foreign culture and the characteristics of other countries reduces the general level of anxiety about the evil and absurd world around where each news bulletin portends or states the apocalypse. (Galinsky: "We found that people traveling abroad raise the level of" general trust "Or" a common belief in humanity. "In contact with other cultures, we meet different people and begin to understand that most of them behave in the same way towards us in the same way. ies "). In travel, we become more open and for changes in one's own personality - when the primary task of the brain is adaptation, when it focuses on the characteristics of the marvelous new world around, it does not have to stagnation, prejudice and totalitarianism regarding the boundaries of the self.

Traveling with an application for meaningful educators thus teach us much more than simple relaxation - they teach us emotional awareness (the last and important factor in the development of EI is self-awareness.) How to listen to oneself, to realize your strengths and weaknesses, to feel your influence on the outside world and vice versa and use intuition for decision-making). And also openness to external experience, which is fundamental for knowledge.

Life experience determines how we connect the disparate elements of the surrounding world into a single picture. Each neuron in our brain has many small processes - dendrites, which are formed through stimulation by electrical impulses. The more we open up for a new experience, the more unobstructed perception occurs, the more actively our brain spins out impulses in different directions. There, where the electrical peaks are formed, the neural protrusions are stretching, closer and closer to the main action. At some point they allow non-related neurons to transmit an electrical impulse, and new synaptic connections are formed.
At this point, we connect different ideas, previously perceived as separate. So our picture of the world is formed.

That is why so often professionals in any field see the environment through the prism of their professionalism: the warriors continue to command and houses, philosophers continue to philosophize in lines for bread. Those who are passionate about art, explain everything through art, biologists through biology, and so on.

The more diverse experience we experience, the more synaptic connections are formed in our brain, the larger our picture of the world and the more complex the system of refraction of external information. Travel, if it is not limited to surface movement, is the easiest and quickest way to download a variety of experiences into itself and rework it into a voluminous, multi-level view of the world.

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