Exploration and engagement

My run a few days ago was given a very positive turn by my listening material. It was the latest episode of Shrink Rap Radio, on the subject of brain health. It's pleasing to be hearing about the benefits of exercise while you're exercising. Gives you a 'goody two shoes' feeling that is always enjoyable.

So, exercise was one of the things this Dr. John Randolph said would help to stave off cognitive decline. I knew about this already - as well as a goody two shoes, I'm a know it all. I first heard about it on an earlier episode of the same podcast, when Dr. John Ratey was the guest. I subsequently read his book, Spark. Though it took me a few years to get around to it.

Let's take a look at some of the claims for exercise, before I get on to what I really wanted to talk about....

During high intensity exercise, there’s a firestorm of chemical activity in the body and in the brain. Hormones and neurotransmitters are released leading – as I understand it, but I’m far (very far) from an expert - to the birth of baby neurons, notably in the hippocampus. This is referred to as neurogenesis. Some chemicals act as a kind of fertilizer, priming the brain to learn and remember new information.

Ratey cites research in schools which strongly suggests that aerobic exercise at the start of the day encourages the ability to pay attention, focus, form memories and learn. Kids in schools which devote an hour in the morning to high intensity exercise do better in tests of their academic ability.

Intense exercise also balances neurotransmitters, like glutamate, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, which help improve mood, decrease anxiety and focus attention.

Then there’s a very basic point: the brain is a hungry organ. Intense concentration demands health, fitness and stamina. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in Flow, ‘Chess, for instance, is one of the most cerebral games there is; yet advanced chess players train by running and swimming because they are aware that if they are physically unfit they will not be able to sustain the long periods of mental concentration that chess tournaments require.’[1]

So, a healthy body really can make you better able to focus, learn and find emotional equilibrium. It also protects your brain from the decline associated with ageing. Spark contains a chapter all about this.

So that's all cool. My running felt a lot better.

Randolph also recommended activities that stimulate different kinds of cognition - crosswords, sudoku and reading; looking at art, or doing art; listening to or playing music; learning something new - essentially, a wide variety of things to stimulate vision, audition and pure cognition. I was pretty happy about all this.

Then he said socialising is important too. Now, that makes sense. There are theories suggesting that our big and complex brains developed in order to handle and facilitate group living. Gossip is about keeping track of relationships and status - you need to distinguish people, understand emotions, make judgements and predictions, sense motivations and predict outcomes. Goodness, language itself arises from a social environment. It has no meaning or purpose in a vacuum. If social life was such a key causal factor in the building of brains then it makes sense that to oil its cogs and fire its cylinders, little will be as effective as that.

Hmmmm, I thought, how well do I meet this need? Is my brain starving for lack of company? But I cheered myself up with the thought that I have been my own conversation partner and that I have, moreover, been engaging in an (albeit one-sided) discussion here. I do feel as if I am in communication with the thinkers I read and perhaps even, to be a bit abstract about it, with their ideas.

OK, I'm not practicing small-talk nor dealing with the emotional depths inspired by or in others. But I am in an ebb and flow of on-going conversation.

Anyway, I shelved the socialising thing and decided that I'd like to bring something else to the party which perhaps captures the content of those cognitive activities and conversation with actual real people. Because I thought that what really matters (yeah, Drs. Randolph and Ratey, whaddayouknow??) might be best summed up as exploratory engagement. Or, engaged exploration.

What Richard said about conceptual art. What I said about wonder and devotion, about catching ideas and about nature. What Midgley says about the lines of life leading outward and what Murdoch says about unselfing. What my Polish friend said about witnessing. It's what Elly does when she dives into the imagined world of her poetry. It's what happens when your mind fuses with a text. It's instress. It's my mother's love and my father's passion for real-life tales of polar exploration. It's the streams of inspiration and the gift of finitude.

This is the unspoken weft in the weave of my Crone Manifesto, the Six Cs.

It's the opposite of the religion of self.

[1] From Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990)