Mental Risks of Working on Large Systems

Working on Large Systems is a serious commitment which may end up with various disasters.  I will mention only three of the mental risks that may cause burn-out in the simplest possibilities or serious psychotic problems.

1-       Norepinephrine – cortisol interaction in chronic stress and sudden demotivation cases.

“Under acute stress—think “fight or flight”—the hypothalamus churns out corticotropin-releasing hormone, prompting a sharp rise in the stress hormone cortisol, which enhances immunity, memory, energy and cardiovascular function. Once the stressor has passed, the hormone DHEA, neuropeptide Y and other biochemicals rush in, restoring equilibrium and easing symptoms, such as hypertension. Acutely, these mediators, along with emotional engagement with a task, may enhance learning.

But when stress is chronic, cortisol erodes health. Immune suppression, hypertension, bone mineral loss, muscle wasting and metabolic disorders ensue.[1]”

“Chronic over-secretion of stress hormones adversely affects brain function, especially memory. Too much cortisol can prevent the brain from laying down a new memory, or from accessing already existing memories.[2]”

“The renowned brain researcher, Robert M. Sapolsky, has shown that sustained stress can damage the hippocampus , the part of the limbic brain which is central to learning and memory. The culprits are "glucocorticoids," a class of steroid hormones secreted from the adrenal glands during stress. They are more commonly know as corticosteroids or cortisol.[2]”

“Excessive cortisol can make it difficult to think or retrieve long-term memories. That's why people get befuddled and confused in a severe crisis. Their mind goes blank because "the lines are down." They can't remember where the fire exit is, for example.[2]”

Norepinephrine balances the bad sideeffects of cortisol.  A highly motivated person working under heavy load goes into a potential disaster if something happens that removes the motivation abruptly.  Norepinephrine supply suddenly stops and his brain faces an abundant amount of cortisol alone.  This is why motivation control both by individuals and the management is so important on large systems.  A manager can easily and permanently hurt an employee who is working under heavy load with high motivation.  Punish the person who expects a reward.  He will be mentally sacked.

 

2-       Kindling namely growth of neural paths unconsciously under continuous stress.  This may explain the situations when somebody feels stress without any reason or remembers a stressful experience at the moment he feels stress about an important problem triggered by some other and simple reason.

"Kindling rewires the brain. … the brain reshapes itself anatomically in response to small noxious stimuli. … Kindling appears to be a kind of learning, but a learning that can occur independent of cognition. … Illness, once expressed, can become responsive to ever smaller stimuli and, in time, independent of stimuli altogether. The expression of the disorder becomes more complex over time[3]."  

If a neural path is used it gets stronger.  The more it is used the stronger it becomes.  Our childhood memories are renewed like this[3].

Over time, repeated stressful experiences can literally, not just figuratively, alter the nervous systems of the temperamentally vulnerable. Animal research has shown that when a rat is given a small shock, it shows no marked reaction; when exposed to such stressors for five consecutive days, it shows signs of the stress response; when exposed for seven or eight days, the rat has a seizure, and thereafter this 'kindled' animal will seize with little or no provocation[3].

When a temperamentally vulnerable person is constantly bombarded with upsetting stimuli, Gold says, the genes that get turned on are those involved in the cellular components of the stress response[3]."

"Suppose a major traumatic stressor occurs, of a sufficient magnitude to disrupt hippocampal function while enhancing amygdaloid function. At some later point, in a similar setting, you have an anxious, autonomic state, agitated and fearful, and you haven't a clue why—this is because you never consolidated memories of the event via your hippocampus while your amygdala-mediated autonomic pathways sure as hell remember[3]."

3-       The effect of living an asocial life on the brain.

It is proved that people who have a larger number and more social relations have bigger amygdala volumes[4,5].  

People who have few and weakly inadequate social relations are at the risk of getting smaller amygdala and hence they are faced with the risk of getting related mental problems:  “Postmortem studies of  schizophrenic patients have found significant amygdala volume reductions as well as of other medial lymbic structures (Bogerts 1984; Bogerts et all., 1985)[6]”.

 

REFERENCES:

[1] FOCUS, Harvard Medical School; The Science of Resiliency, May 5, 2011.

Bruce McEwen, a professor of neuroendocrinology at the Rockefeller University, The Embattled Brain.

Linking the nervous and endocrine systems, biochemical mediators regulate the effects of stress, which are exacerbated by health-related behaviors such as inactivity or poor diet. Under acute stress—think “fight or flight”—the hypothalamus churns out corticotropin-releasing hormone, prompting a sharp rise in the stress hormone cortisol, which enhances immunity, memory, energy and cardiovascular function. Once the stressor has passed, the hormone DHEA, neuropeptide Y and other biochemicals rush in, restoring equilibrium and easing symptoms, such as hypertension. Acutely, these mediators, along with emotional engagement with a task, may enhance learning.

But when stress is chronic, cortisol erodes health. Immune suppression, hypertension, bone mineral loss, muscle wasting and metabolic disorders ensue. Within the hippocampus and amygdala, seats of memory and emotion, dendrites shrink and synapses vanish, McEwen has shown. Cognitive function declines, depression sinks in, the immune system weakens, and metabolism goes awry. In a study of medical students preparing for board exams, McEwen’s collaborators found that higher levels of perceived stress predicted poor mental flexibility and reduced functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex.

The good news: These ill effects are reversible, McEwen said. Regular exercise returns the hippocampus to normal size and improves memory, for example, while mindfulness training reduces the amygdala’s volume and curbs anxiety. Many adult diseases could be prevented by reducing toxic stress in utero and in early childhood, he said.

[2] Resources for Science Learning, The Franklin Institute, “The Human Brain”, Unisys.

“Attack of the Adrenals”-A Metabolic Story

The ambulance siren screams it’s warning to get out of the way. You can’t move your car because you’re stuck in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam that reaches as far as the eye can see. There must be an accident up ahead. Meanwhile the road construction crew a few feet from your car is jack-hammering the pavement. You are about to enter the stress zone.

 "Attention all parasympathetic forces. Urgent. Adrenal gland missile silos mounted atop kidneys have just released chemical cortisol weapons of brain destruction. Mobilize all internal defenses. Launch immediate counter-calm hormones before hippocampus is hammered by cortisol."

Hormones rush to your adrenal glands to suppress the streaming cortisol on its way to your brain. Other hormones rush to your brain to round up all the remnants of cortisol missles that made it to your hippocampus. These hormones escort the cortisol remnants back to Kidneyland for a one-way ride on the Bladderhorn. You have now reached metabolic equilibrium, also known as homeostasis.

...

Stress and Memory

Chronic over-secretion of stress hormones adversely affects brain function, especially memory. Too much cortisol can prevent the brain from laying down a new memory, or from accessing already existing memories.

The renowned brain researcher, Robert M. Sapolsky, has shown that sustained stress can damage the hippocampus , the part of the limbic brain which is central to learning and memory. The culprits are "glucocorticoids," a class of steroid hormones secreted from the adrenal glands during stress. They are more commonly know as corticosteroids or cortisol .

During a perceived threat, the adrenal glands immediately release adrenalin. If the threat is severe or still persists after a couple of minutes, the adrenals then release cortisol. Once in the brain cortisol remains much longer than adrenalin, where it continues to affect brain cells.

Cortisol Affects Memory Formation and Retrieval

Have you ever forgotten something during a stressful situation that you should have remembered? Cortisol also interferes with the function of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that brain cells use to communicate with each other.

Excessive cortisol can make it difficult to think or retrieve long-term memories. That's why people get befuddled and confused in a severe crisis. Their mind goes blank because "the lines are down." They can't remember where the fire exit is, for example.

Why We Lose Our Memory

Stress hormones divert blood glucose to exercising muscles, therefore the amount of glucose – hence energy – that reaches the brain's hippocampus is diminished. This creates an energy crisis in the hippocampus which compromises its ability to create new memories.

That may be why some people can't remember a very traumatic event, and why short-term memory is usually the first casualty of age-related memory loss resulting from a lifetime of stress.

Cortisol and Temporary Memory Loss-Study

In an animal study, rats were stressed by an electrical shock, and then made to go through a maze that they were already familiar with. When the shock was given either four hours before or two minutes before navigating the maze, the rats had no problem. But, when they were stressed by a shock 30 minutes before, the rats were unable to remember their way through the maze.

This time-dependent effect on memory performance correlates with the levels of circulating cortisol, which are highest at 30 minutes. The same thing happened when non-stressed rats were injected with cortisol. In contrast, when cortisol production was chemically suppressed, then there were no stress-induced effects on memory retrieval.

According to James McGaugh, director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine, "This effect only lasts for a couple of hours, so that the impairing effect in this case is a temporary impairment of retrieval. The memory is not lost. It is just inaccessible or less accessible for a period of time."¹²

Cortisol and the Degenerative Cascade

Normally, in response to stress, the brain's hypothalamus secretes a hormone that causes the pituitary gland to secrete another hormone that causes the adrenals to secrete cortisol. When levels of cortisol rise to a certain level, several areas of the brain – especially the hippocampus – tell the hypothalamus to turn off the cortisol-producing mechanism. This is the proper feedback response.

 The hippocampus, however, is the area most damaged by cortisol. In his book Brain Longevity, Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., describes how older people often have lost 20-25% of the cells in their hippocampus, so it cannot provide proper feedback to the hypothalamus, so cortisol continues to be secreted. This, in turn, causes more damage to the hippocampus, and even more cortisol production. Thus, a Catch-22 "degenerative cascade" begins, which can be very difficult to stop.

 Cortisol and Brain Degeneration-Study

Studies done by Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky, Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University, showed that lots of stress or exposure to cortisol accelerates the degeneration of the aging hippocampus.

And, because the hippocampus is part of the feedback mechanism that signals when to stop cortisol production, a damaged hippocampus causes cortisol levels to get out of control – further compromising memory and cognitive function. The cycle of degeneration then continues. (Perhaps similar to the deterioration of the pancreas-insulin feedback system.

 Cortisol Levels During Human Aging-Study

The study was titled "Cortisol levels during human aging predict hippocampal atrophy and memory deficits". A third of the 60 volunteers, who were between ages 60 and 85, had chronically high cortisol levels, a problem that seems to be fairly common in older people.¹³

 

The size of the hippocampus averaged 14% smaller in one group and showed high and rising cortisol levels, compared to a group with moderate and decreasing levels. The small hippocampus group also did worse at remembering a path through a human maze and pictures they'd seen 24 hours earlier and – two tasks that use the hippocampus.

Reference of Stress on the Brain:
12. Nature, Aug 20, 1998
13. Nature Neuroscience, May 1998.

[3] MyBrainNotes™.com, Subcortical Brain Structures, Stress, Emotions, and Mental Illness

Kindling and stress—how experience affects the brain:

Is it possible that chronic stress, through a process called kindling, can create hard-wired, hypersensitive neural networks capable of dictating and automating symptoms from a wide range of instinctual behavior patterns? In his video course, Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, 2nd edition, Robert M. Sapolsky examines how communication between neurons is strengthened as a result of experience. When the dendritic spines of neurons are stimulated rapidly, the synapses between the communicating neurons become "hyper-responsive or potentiated" due to chemical changes within the neural environment. Subsequently, less stimulation is necessary to again prod the neuron to fire—the moment when an electrical signal bursts through the neuron's axon, prompting release of chemical messengers called neurotransmitters into the synapse between neurons, often increasing the likelihood that other neurons will fire in a sort of chain reaction. In other words, Sapolsky says, the neuron's "action potential" is increased. What's called "long-term potentiation" is thus the basis for learning and memory, possibly including injurious forms of learning such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In Listening to Prozac: A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self (1993), Peter D. Kramer writes, "Kindling rewires the brain. … the brain reshapes itself anatomically in response to small noxious stimuli. … Kindling appears to be a kind of learning, but a learning that can occur independent of cognition. … Illness, once expressed, can become responsive to ever smaller stimuli and, in time, independent of stimuli altogether. The expression of the disorder becomes more complex over time."

In "Psychosomatic disease and the 'visceral' brain: Recent developments bearing on the Papez theory of emotion" (1949), Paul D. Maclean theorized about the kindling process. "It is possible that if a certain electrical pattern of information were to reverberate for a prolonged period or at repeated intervals in the neuronal circuit, the nerve cells (perhaps, say, as the result of enzymatic catalysis in the dentritic processes at specific axone-dendritic junctions) would be permanently 'sensitized' to respond to this particular pattern at some future time. Such a mechanism would provide for one variety of enduring memory in a way that is remotely analogous to a wire recorder. These hypothetical considerations suggest how oft-repeated childhood emotional patterns could persist to exert themselves in adult life."

As MacLean suggests in using the term visceral, certain reactions are not embedded in language and intellect, they are more like "gut feelings" that can remain in primordial memory systems and that can be strengthened through kindling. Winifred Gallagher explains kindling in an article in The Atlantic Monthly, "How We Become What We Are" (September 1994). Gallagher writes:

Over time, repeated stressful experiences can literally, not just figuratively, alter the nervous systems of the temperamentally vulnerable. Animal research has shown that when a rat is given a small shock, it shows no marked reaction; when exposed to such stressors for five consecutive days, it shows signs of the stress response; when exposed for seven or eight days, the rat has a seizure, and thereafter this 'kindled' animal will seize with little or no provocation. Experiments of this kind are of course not done with people, but Philip Gold and other neuroscientists now think that in human beings, too, by triggering a cascade of chemical reactions, serious chronic stress, particularly in early life, causes changes in the way genes within a brain cell function, permanently altering the neuron's biology. Because they require a particular type of input to turn on or off, only some of a neuron's thousands of genes, each of which is involved in some aspect of cellular structure or communication, are activated at any given moment. When a temperamentally vulnerable person is constantly bombarded with upsetting stimuli, Gold says, the genes that get turned on are those involved in the cellular components of the stress response."

I contend that neurotransmission in the amygdalae and their target structures is sometimes kindled to generate dopamine-driven behaviors aimed at solving problems including restoring order, control, and most importantly–confidence. Under normal circumstances, this could be construed as a survival instinct. Under extreme stress, however, especially when an outlet for pent-up energy is not available, these behaviors may turn into obsessions or compulsions. We will discuss such neurotransmission in greater detail in Part 3 of MyBrainNotes.com. For now, I would like to point out that in Monkeyluv and Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals (2005), Robert M. Sapolsky describes how monkeys release dopamine in anticipation of a food reward. They get most excited when a light first comes on signaling that they may now perform a learned task and upon completion, will receive food. Their excitement does not peak when the food finally appears; it peaks well before that point. Sapolsky writes, "It's about the anticipation of reward. It's about mastery and expectation and confidence."

...

Another example of kindling, which we discuss above, is the effects of stress on the hippocampi. In his 1995 New York Times article titled, "Severe Trauma May Damage the Brain as Well as the Psyche," Daniel Goleman explains that studies in rats and primates suggest that glucocorticoids are the culprit. Goleman quotes Robert Sapolsky, who explains that glucocorticoids "may be neurotoxic to the hippocampus at the massive levels that are released under extreme stress or during trauma. I'm talking about the levels you would see in a zebra running from a lion, or a person fleeing a mugger—a real physical life-and-death crisis—if it is repeated again and again as time goes on."

 

If the glucocorticoids released during extreme stress and trauma damage the hippocampi, it is no wonder that, according to Sapolsky in Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, "there is atrophy of the hippocampus in long-term depression. The atrophy emerges as a result of the depression (rather than precedes it), and the longer the depressive history, the more atrophy and the more memory problems."

Sapolsky points to the work of psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier who exposed animals to "pathological amounts" of stress. "The result is a condition strikingly similar to a human depression." Sapolsky explains that it is "repeated" stress that generates depressive symptoms combined with "a complete absence of control on the part of the animal." In other words, the animal has no outlets that can be used to vent frustration. "When it comes to what makes for psychological stress, a lack of predictability and control are at the top of the list of things you want to avoid," Sapolsky writes.

Sapolsky calls attention to the work of Joseph LeDoux of New York University, "who pretty much put the amygdala on the map when it comes to anxiety." In a way that only he can do, Sapolsky sums up the paradox between severe, traumatic stress and its effect on the hippocampi versus the amygdalae. "Suppose a major traumatic stressor occurs, of a sufficient magnitude to disrupt hippocampal function while enhancing amygdaloid function. At some later point, in a similar setting, you have an anxious, autonomic state, agitated and fearful, and you haven't a clue why—this is because you never consolidated memories of the event via your hippocampus while your amygdala-mediated autonomic pathways sure as hell remember."

[4] Kevin C Bickart1, Christopher I Wright2,3, Rebecca J Dautoff2,3, Bradford C Dickerson2–4 & Lisa Feldman Barrett2,3,5; Nature America  Nature-Neuroscience, Amygdala volume and social network size in humans, 2010

We found that amygdala volume correlates with the size and complexity of social networks in adult humans. An exploratory analysis of subcortical structures did not find strong evidence for similar relationships with any other structure, but there were associations between social network variables and cortical thickness in three cortical areas, two of them with amygdala connectivity. These findings indicate that the amygdala is important in social behavior.

...

 In this study we examined whether amygdala volume varies with individual variation in the size and complexity of social groupings within a single primate species, humans. In 58 healthy adults (22 females; mean age M = 52.6, s.d. = 21.2, range = 19–83 years) with confirmed absence of DSM-IV Axis I diagnoses and normal perform­ance on cognitive testing, we examined social network size and com­plexity with two subscales of the Social Network Index (SNI9).

 Linear regression analyses revealed that individuals with larger and more complex social networks had larger amygdala volumes (Fig. 1).

[5] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Amygdala

Social interaction

Amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs) of social networks.^[41][42] Individuals with larger amygdalae had larger and more complex social networks. They were also better able to make accurate social judgments about other persons' faces.^[43] It is hypothesized that larger amygdalae allow for greater emotional intelligence, enabling greater societal integration and cooperation with others.^[44]

[6] Ivone-CastroVale, Lilianna de Sousa, Maria Amelia Tavares, Rui Coelho; PSICOSSOMATICA 2002, Knowing the Amydala: Its Contribution to Psychiatric Disorders

 

Postmortem studies of  schizophrenic patients have found significant amygdala volume reductions as well as of other medial lymbic structures (Bogerts 1984; Bogerts et all., 1985).

...

Measures of amydala volumes with MRI of 46 schizophrenics compared to 60 normal controls and 27 bipolar subjects found right amygdala volumes smaller in schizophrenia and left amygdala volumes smaller in bipolar disorder (Pearlson et all., 1997) .

Too Much Attention May Cause Forgetting

Focusing on a certain thing may cause other things to be forgotten for sometime. After relaxing the focus one may find nothing left from the forgotten things. This may be detrimental where a large systems controller has to return back to handle the normal workload after a critical problem is solved[1,2,3].

Forgetting is inherent in the nature of focusing. “selective attention and behavioral inhibition are two sides of the same coin: Attention is the effect of biasing competition in favor of task-relevant information, and inhibition is the consequence that this has for the irrelevant information[4]”. It is inevitable that irrelevant things will be forgotten when one focuses.

Once focused, brain tries to keep its focus till the goal is achieved.
“PFC must maintain its activity robustly against distractions until a goal is achieved,[4]”. This also makes it impossible to maintain other things in the current memory.

The brain maintains our goals and rewards. “The aim of the cognitive system is not only to predict reward but to pursue the actions that will ensure its procurement[4].”

Setting clear goals and rewards helps to succeed in the current task but increases the exclusion effect of the forgotten current memories. The existence of a reward increases the forgetting effect tremendously.

Many drivers have experienced forgetting the portable parking sign and driving on-hitting it. It is sometimes distraction... But other times when there is no distraction, it is because you have hurry to reach somewhere and you focus all your skill and ability to get out of that narrow parking lot. Too much focusing is not good. Focusing should be proportionate with the task ahead + should have some leeway.

When there are other people in the car the German saying may help: ‘The car is driven not only by the driver but by all the passengers’. There are situations when the large systems operator must really focus his effort. In these situations a copilot, disributed processing of a team serves to replace the forgetting effect.

Unfortunately there are some cases that there exists only one pilot or the ATCO is alone for a short moment etc. In this case, time related intention may be set by the same person. If his volition is in perfact shape, he will automatically remember the waiting tasks as soon as he completes the emergency case. This requires a healthy balance and cooperation between the subconscious and conscious of the operator(I will make a few comments on this later).

Ali R+

Refs:

[1] ICAO -Threat and Error Management (TEM) in Air Traffic Control

PRELIMINARY EDITION - 2005
...
9. ATSP External Threats
9.4.1 Controllers from adjacent units may forget to coordinate traffic,

[2] Steven T. Shorrocka, Barry Kirwanb: Development and application of a human error identification tool for air traffic control; EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre, BP15, F91222, Bretigny Sur Orge, France, February 2002
...
(i) Perception: errors in visual detection and visual search, and errors in listening.
(ii) Memory: forgetting (or misrecalling) temporary or longer-term information, forgetting previous actions, and forgetting planned actions.
(iii) Judgement, planning and decision-making: errors in judging aircraft trajectories, errors in making decisions, and errors in planning.
(iv) Action execution: actions or speech performed notas-planned.
...
Memory: Controllers could forget to issue a planned instruction (e.g. FL or heading) after a distraction, or may forget received information. Reduced separation generally allows less time to address resulting situations, and places more demand on the pilot to sight traffic or request and implement avoiding action. Other errors of memory could include forgetting to check the position of traffic previously observed at long range. With reduced separation minima, it is possible that controllers could delay such checks, knowing that traffic will take more time to cover the distance to separation minima.

[3] Thomas Bove: Development and Validation of a Human Error Management Taxonomy in Air Traffic Control, November 2002
...
type of unintended actions and involve memory failures. Such memory failures can manifest themselves through, for example, forgetting planned items or forgetting intentions.

[4] Earl K. Miller(1), Jonathan D. Cohen(2): AN INTEGRATIVE THEORY OF PREFRONTAL CORTEX FUNCTION
(1)Center for Learning and Memory, RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139; e-mail: ekm@ai.mit.edu
(2)Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior and Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544; e-mail: jdc@princeton.edu

Focus vs. Concentrate

‘To focus’ and ‘to concentrate’ are two different forms of ‘attention[3]’.

Attention contains an element of interest and a determination to deal with a certain thing. Focus is “ a point at which rays (as of light, heat, or sound) converge or from which they diverge[4]”. More abstractly focus is “a center of activity, attraction, or attention[4]”. All three of these terms have their roots in absolute usages. They have gained more abstract meanings through the time.

More precisely, attention is “ a condition of readiness for applying the mind to something[1]”. To focus is “to bring into attentional focus[1]”, “to cause to be concentrated[1]”. To concentrate is “to bring or direct toward a common center or objective[2]”, “to focus one's powers, efforts, or attention[2]”. Please refer to the references for extensive dictionary entries.

In one of the forms of visual attention “attention is concentrated to a specific area of the visual scene (i.e. it is focused),” “The focus is an area that extracts information from the visual scene with a high-resolution, the geometric center of which being where visual attention is directed [5].”

To focus is by definition to exclude something and direct the attention to the focused area. This is the same for visual or abstract focusing. To focus on an object means to gather our attention to that specific object and exclude others.

To concentrate is more abstract than to focus by definition. In terms of looking with your eyes, , concentrating means to look at something and see other things only in relation to this reference point. To focus means to look at something and not see other things at all.

Concentric means ‘having a common centre[6]’. It also means ‘to make dense[2]’. To concentrate on an abstract thing means to focus in the beginning on only that thing but than begin to look for all the things semantically related to this focused thing and progress in spheres of abstraction outwards and far from the beginning point.

Focusing implies unconditional exclusion by definition. Concentrating implies inclusion of every possible related thing to a limited subject. For every concentration effort probably there is a focusing stage at the beginning.

Focusing and concentrating are mental functions that belong to human mind. The character of these functions give strong clues on their origins in the mind.

“selective attention and behavioral inhibition are two sides of the same coin: Attention is the effect of biasing competition in favor of task-relevant information, and inhibition is the consequence that this has for the irrelevant information[7].” Selective attention is a Pre Frontal Cortex (PFC) function.
PFC provides many executive control functions including the sense of consciousness.

It is more difficult to find specific limited similarities for concentrating. Concentrating implies strong memory access (probably long term and short term), Anterior Cingulate Cortex for checking whether the semantically related item is really related and usefull, PFC fro executive control and keeping the matter under the control of the ‘will’ and probably others.

A carefull comment can be made after these. Concentrating needs more flexibility and relaxing than focusing. You need brute force to focus immediately, but a more relaxed and flexible attitude and possibly more interaction[8] while concentrating.

Memory retrieval is faster when done as an automatic process. Automatic processes need a more relaxed and flexible attitude. Increased interaction also may help to create interruptions which ACC needs to intervene to check the correctness of the current process[9].

Ali R+ SARAL

REFERENCES:

[1] Merriam-Webster

Definition of FOCUS

transitive verb
1a : to bring into focus b : to adjust the focus of (as the eye or a lens)
2: to cause to be concentrated
3: to bring (as light rays) to a focus : concentrate

intransitive verb
1: to come to a focus : converge
2: to adjust one's eye or a camera to a particular range
3: to concentrate attention or effort

Examples of FOCUS
1. She has an amazing ability to focus for hours at a time.
2. I wasn't able to focus the camera.
3. I wasn't able to get the camera to focus.

First Known Use of FOCUS
1775

[2] Merriam-Webster

Definition of CONCENTRATE

transitive verb
1a : to bring or direct toward a common center or objective : FOCUS b : to gather into one body, mass, or force c : to accumulate (a toxic substance) in bodily tissues
2a : to make less dilute b : to express or exhibit in condensed form

intransitive verb
1: to draw toward or meet in a common center
2: GATHER, COLLECT
3: to focus one's powers, efforts, or attention

Origin of CONCENTRATE
com- + Latin centrum center
First Known Use: 1641

[3] Merriam-Webster

Definition of ATTENTION
1a : the act or state of applying the mind to something b : a condition of readiness for such attention involving especially a selective narrowing or focusing of consciousness and receptivity
2: OBSERVATİON, NOTİCE; especially : consideration with a view to action
3a : an act of civility or courtesy especially in courtship b : sympathetic consideration of the needs and wants of others : ATTENTİVENESS
...
Examples of ATTENTION
1. We focused our attention on this particular poem.
2. My attention wasn't really on the game.
3. You need to pay more attention in school.
4. She likes all the attention she is getting from the media.
5. The actor avoids drawing attention to himself.
6. The book has received national attention.
7. The trial is getting a lot of public attention.
8. The children were competing for the teacher's attention.
9. A cat on a leash is sure to attract attention.
10. I would like to call your attention to a problem we are having.

Origin of ATTENTION
Middle English attencioun, from Latin attention-, attentio, from attendere
First Known Use: 14th century

[4]Merriam Webster

Definition of FOCUS
1a : a point at which rays (as of light, heat, or sound) converge or from which they diverge or appear to diverge; specifically : the point where the geometrical lines or their prolongations conforming to the rays diverging from or converging toward another point intersect and give rise to an image after reflection by a mirror or refraction by a lens or optical system b : a point of convergence of a beam of particles (as electrons)
2a : FOCAL LENGTH b : adjustment for distinct vision; also : the area that may be seen distinctly or resolved into a clear image c : a state or condition permitting clear perception or understanding d : DİRECTİON 6c
3: one of the fixed points that with the corresponding directrix defines a conic section
4: a localized area of disease or the chief site of a generalized disease or infection
5a : a center of activity, attraction, or attention b : a point of concentration
6: the place of origin of an earthquake or moonquake
7: directed attention : EMPHASİS

Examples of FOCUS
1. He's successful, but he feels that his life lacks focus.
2. His life lacks a focus.
Origin of FOCUS
New Latin, from Latin, hearth
First Known Use: 1644

[5] Free online dictionary
focal point
n 1. (Physics / General Physics) Also called principal focus the point on the axis of a lens or mirror to which parallel rays of light converge or from which they appear to diverge after refraction or reflection
2. a central point of attention or interest


Selective Attention
In cognitive psychology there are at least two models which describe how visual attention operates. These models may be considered loosely as metaphors which are used to describe internal processes and to generate hypotheses that are falsifiable. Generally speaking, visual attention is thought to operate as a two-stage process.[11] In the first stage, attention is distributed uniformly over the external visual scene and processing of information is performed in parallel. In the second stage, attention is concentrated to a specific area of the visual scene (i.e. it is focused), and processing is performed in a serial fashion.
The first of these models to appear in the literature is the spotlight model. The term "spotlight" was inspired by the work of William James who described attention as having a focus, a margin, and a fringe.[12] The focus is an area that extracts information from the visual scene with a high-resolution, the geometric center of which being where visual attention is directed. Surrounding the focus is the fringe of attention which extracts information in a much more crude fashion (i.e. low-resolution). This fringe extends out to a specified area and this cut-off is called the margin.

[6] Merriam-Webster

Definition of CONCENTRIC
1: having a common center
2: having a common axis : COAXİAL

Origin of CONCENTRIC
Middle English consentrik, from Medieval Latin concentricus, from Latin com- + centrum center
First Known Use: 14th century

[7] AN INTEGRATIVE THEORY OF PREFRONTAL CORTEX FUNCTION
Earl K. Miller, Center for Learning and Memory, RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT.
Jonathan D. Cohen, Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior and Department of Psychology, Princeton

[8]George Bush, Phan Luu and Michael I. Posner
Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex
The cognitive subdivision is part of a distributed attentional network. It maintains strong reciprocal interconnections with
lateral prefrontal cortex (BA 46/9), parietal cortex (BA 7), and premotor and supplementary motor areas6. Various functions
have been ascribed to the ACcd, including modulation of attention or executive functions by influencing sensory or response
selection (or both); monitoring competition, complex motor control, motivation, novelty, error detection and working
memory; and anticipation of cognitively demanding tasks (see Refs 1,3,5,6,14–17 for reviews).

The affective subdivision, by contrast, is connected to the amygdala, periaqueductal gray, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus,
anterior insula, hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex6, and has outflow to autonomic, visceromotor and endocrine systems. The ACad is primarily involved in assessing the salience of emotional and motivational information and the regulation of emotional responses5,6,15,18.
[9] AN INTEGRATIVE THEORY OF PREFRONTAL CORTEX FUNCTION


Earl K. Miller, Center for Learning and Memory, RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT.

Jonathan D. Cohen, Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior and Department of Psychology, Princeton

There was no differential activation observed within ACC during this period. In contrast, strong activation was observed in ACC during the period of stimulus presentation and responding. This activity was greater for conflict than congruent stimuli.

Relaxing After High Concentration - 3

A FUNCTION OF IMAGENING

We adjust our concentration level by looking and seeing. They normally balance each other through the natural flow of the events in the daily life. This balance determines the thinking speed. Motivation, dreaming about success or dreaming about things that will come with success increases our bodyly and mental capacity hence helps us to succeed.

Let’s return back to the vision metaphor. If we focus on something and look at it sternly, our looking focus gets smaller, concentration increases to maximum, on the other hand ambient vision begins to increase and after a while our vision gets blurred and our eyes begin to contemplate. There is a natural control mechanism that stops the increase in the concentration.  Focused vision based on conscious control is balanced by ambient vision which is controlled by subconscious in the daily life.

Unfortunately, when doing things professionally or using long duration high concentration we stop this natural mechanism with our control mechanism and determination. As a result of this, we are left with a mental tiredness at the end of the job that we can not get rid of with the natural mechanisms of our mind. To relax from high concentration we should erase the memory areas that were used, or forget everything related to this task. This is not a simple operation. The experience that is gathered, the knowledge that is attained must be organized and stored but at the same time the unnecessary information details, semantic relations that are gathered shall be erased or in the computing jargon ‘garbage collection’ must be done. Hence,mental activity does not end at the end of the task. The Project Evaluation meeting is important not only for the preservation of the organization experience but also it serves the mental health of the individuals who participated in the project.

One of the things that the garbage collection in the human mind is done with, is imagening. In the evaluation meetings that I have mentioned above, alternative suggestions on how to do things and, what would have happened, would enable us to see other possibilities and opportunities besides the routine pieces of the task.

I will write an other article on the organization aspect of the subject. The working memory that we use for cognition is not similar to a computer memory. It is not organized as linear located cells on a page. It is fragmented and distributed with many interconnections. Indeed the working memory is a collection of neurons distributed in the brain that can be kept connected and reached during a certain time frame. Even the input buffers and the long term buffers may be included to the working memory as needed. This happens when long duration high concentration is used and is frequent in software development.

In order to relax, the relational connections shall be erased. The connections can not be erased with a single commend like a computer. Accept in the case of electric schock... Something has to be overwritten in order to be forgotten. Infact, this is impossible.If the information has stayed under the attention for a considerable duration, it will be connected to a very wide network. This is an automatic connection process which may reach very high abstraction levels. Nevertheless if something is not updated proportionate to its tenure under attention, it will finally get forgotten or, its retrieval become extremely difficult. Of course this is related with the subject matter, personal things related to te very self are difficult to forget.

McKIM proposes this solution in the “Directed Imagination” section of his book ‘Experience in Visual Thinking’: “Control the passive negative worries and transform them to a productive imagination. If you worry about a failure, dream the positive success instead. If you are afraid of missing a deadline, dream the happiness you will fell when you catch it...” McCim also mentions that one should use professional advise when utilizing imagination.

I believe added to the methods related to decreasing the thinking speed, imagining or day-dreaming may also help. Imagining small dreams related to the job done that day, may be completely absurd, unrelated, funny dreams, freeing your mind, imagination, subconscious from everything may help to forget the already created load of semantically related connections.

In his work named ‘Imagination and Emotion’ Sartre states that “the necessity for a consciousness to imagine is the ability to propose an unreal hypothesis”. In short, in order to imagine, you should propose a hypothesis Outside the existing phenomenons and against the reality theyconvey. If pondered upon, one can see that this is close to being impossible if tried to achieve completely. Sartre proposes that this can be done at least using a certain point of view. Sartre states “In order to imagine, conciousness should be able to escape from the world; should be able to withdraw from the world with its own effort”.   For this, “Conciousness must be free”.

Sartre’s ‘Imagination and Emotion’ includes strong clues that after long duration high concentration, imagening may do the ‘garbage collection’ that I have described above. I will further elaborate in my future articles on this matter.

“Man becomes great to the extent that he controls his imagination.” (Rolf Alexander, The Mind in Healing, Dutton).


Ali R+ SARAL

Relaxing After High Concentration - 2

To Forget – To Empty the Mental Energy



What does ‘mentally relaxing’ mean? It is to forget the thing you have focused your attention on together with its semantical relations. Namely, to forget what you pay attention to and its relations.


To concentrate is focusing your attention to a certain subject and remember related things , thus forget the unrelated things. Hence you erase things unrelated to the subject from your working memory. You remember and bring relavent things into your working memory instead.


In fact the working memory of the mind should not be viewed like a computer addressed page. It should be viewed as a network and even networks of networks of which connection weights can be adjusted and reduced to null.


When focusing the weights of connections between some specific neurons increase. These neurons have to be related to the subject and may be located at various parts distributed in our brain.


High concentration occurs when the application duration ofdedicated attention and the character of focusing is augmented. Long duration high concentration occurs when concentration on a subject continuously for three or six months. The mind accumulates a large amount of information on a specific subject and tries to find a solution (for example in large software projects).


In the case of long duration high concentration, the brain adds buffers related to perception to the working memory and the short term memory layer(episodic and other). The slowness in the body movements of large systems engineers or the behaviour of surgeons after operations, for ex. Both group has the tendency to put their personal belongings always to the same locations... are the result of extreme mental load. This difficulty is the result of the working memory expanding over average size and short term memory getting overloaded with too many relations. Episodic memory and buffer memories related with basic senses get added to the working memory. The situation gets to the stage that you begin to forget simple things such as you have stopped at the previous red light. Smell and taste senses get weaker.


Under heavy load, the brain does not only lncrease the relations of the elements in the subject matter but also takes meaures to increase the relational mechanisms and elavating precautions. It changes the neuraş networks’ propogational properties by making the body secrete hormones. Hence, thresholds for making decisions change and it gets easier to resolve a decision regardless of whether it is right or wrong. The hormones that affect this, affects the person’s affections also. It is not a coincidence that engineers get increasingly more sensitive at the end of difficult projects or calm people get belligerent...  Strangely, things get calmed down by the end of the project.


The commands that the brain sends to the body under heavy mental load affects not only the affective behaviour and decision thresholds of the person. The affective changes affect the thinking speed also. The new propogation conditions created by the hormones does not only affect the macro level decision making but also affects the micro events of relational connection establishing and determination of connection weights. For ex. The abrupt and mostly correct reactions shown under emergency conditions depend on the adjustment of the thinking speed as well as automatic processes.


A global result of high and long duration concentration is that the mental control ability of the person increases over normal levels. An indication of this is the increase in the speaking native and foreign languages ability, also an increase in the perception sensitivity. You begin to notice things on your computer screen that you normally did not see before. You begin to remember the relational details of past events that you have not noticed before.


An even more increase of the thinking speed causes serious problems. You begin to see halucinations or hear sounds. Difficulties in using the language begin. You begin to hear other languages when speaking your native tongue. The same problems recur in your mind continuously.


A person under stress has difficulty to forget(interalia). The inability to put aside everything and to look at problems with a fresh mind stops the chance of finding solutions as well as deepening of the mental disturbance. It may not be a good solution to go to a long nice vacation in this situation. When you open the house door on your return, you will find the same problems exactly as you have left them behind.


If paid attention the stages that the problem occurs most seriously give strong clues to its solution. Forgetting is one of these.   If we can forget even some details of the things that happened after a mentally loaded day, if they do not come back to your mind this means everything is OK.The key to relaxing, to stay away from the bad effects of high concentration is forgetting.


Forgetting destroys the semantic relations network formed by the high concentration, erases the connection weights created for this network. The destroying-reduction of the connection weights reduces the cognitive ability and slows down the thinking speed. Although speed is a chemical or hormonal phenomenon logical structure may have a slowing effect on the speed.


Forgetting, specifically forgetting the context, reduces the load on the memory hence reduces the enforcement of the perception buffer memories to act as the working memory. The speed of the forgetting process may cause negative effects after heavy concentration periods. The person begins to get interested with many cmopletely unrelated subjects using the mental capacity he/she has created. Such as pushing self to remember details of things in the past, thinking extremely abstract subjects. He tries to continue to push self mentally with other activities.


When stopping long duration high concentration or even stopping the daily working process,mental activities with increasingly lower densities may help. One should leave some time to the brain to adjust. For example, listening English news first, then Turkish news, and then an art program and then an entertainment program... Close the TV and sip some tea on your favorite armchair...


By the way, what does normal people do when they use high concentration sometimes? They do not do anything intentional. Their physique and the personality that they have developed protects them. The problem occurs on people who work on large systems with critical responsibilities, concentrating highly for long durations or jobs requiring to carry a subject in one’s mind for long durations. These people break down the resistence their brains show to high concentration by material or immaterial motivations. If these people are not trained to take precautions against these problems they become prone to serious mental risks.


When your mind gets tired your attention drops and you begin to think different subjects. As an example to your mind taking autonomous precautions is seeing halucinations when the thinking speed increases too much. Infact halucination is a way of getting rid of excessive mental energy.


Your behavioural patterns may have a protective effect. For example, a person under heavy load tries to act using more plans.  Programming and planning, designing require a high amount of mental effort hence, help to empty the brain from mental energy. These not only organize the tasks to do but also helps to spend the excessive mental energy.


The problem is the excessive increase in the mental energy and the thinking speed because of the excessive concntration. They remain at these high levels for durations as long as 3 – 6 months and they do not drop down to normal levels during this long period of time. This unreducing mental energy and thinking speed causes permanent changes in the brains of the related employees. The employees must be trained against the bad side effects of long duration high concentration and they must be screened psychologically in a systematic way.


My next article will propose a method to relax for large systems employees who have critical duties. The most important problem with a tired mind is being unable to forget that day and its difficulties. There must be some memory mechanisms in order to forget easily. If we can analize these mechanisms carefully may be we can develop some useful techniques.