Experts offer insights and strategies to help individuals unlock their inner potential and build resilience. This is the first of a series of talks under the “Unleashing Inner Potential” banner, organised by MMA and KAS in association with Buddhi Clinic.
Every behaviour is provoked by a stimulus
Dr Ennapadam S Krishnamoorthy, Founder, Buddhi Clinic and Neurokrish Foundation
Mindfulness exercises help you to take control of your mind, even if for a brief period. You are able to be mindful and perceive in depth a lot of things. Doing these exercises repeatedly is tremendously beneficial. A lot of people use short meditation as a way of being mentally sharp and stress free.
I want to discuss why childhood is very important. There were some studies done in the 70s and 80s called the New York studies of temperament. They showed us that the roots of human temperament, who we are, how we behave and how we react are laid out in childhood. One part of everything that we are is biological. It is the way our brains are wired.
We talk about brain and the mind. To tell you the difference in a very simple way, you have a physical structure called the brain, which has millions of neurons and nerve cells talking to each other through chemical systems. The working brain is your mind. The brain is like the computer—the hardware—and the mind is like the operating system that exists in your computer. It doesn’t occupy any real space.
With that difference in mind, one part of who you are is laid down in childhood and it’s biological. Then, of course, you go through life experiences. Positive experiences have the ability to make us stronger. Negative experiences can also make us stronger but if we don’t deal with them, they leave us with scars. The balance of the positive and negative is what you are, at any point in time, and that is your psyche or your operating mind. Then, there are social circumstances around us. Many of us went through COVID, when life was uncertain. The social circumstances around us were not very good and they were very stressful.
When you go through difficulties at work or with your family, the social circumstances are not very good. How you react to all this through your life is determined in childhood to some extent. Childhood is the basis for your long term mental well-being and resilience. We may think it’s too late to change. But on the other hand, it’s not too late to make things better for other members of your family and people whom you love and people who work with you. We must set right those childhood experiences in our minds so they don’t continue to trouble us.
Learning, Memory and Behaviour
We spend our life learning. Learning is the acquisition of new knowledge or the modification of existing knowledge. We either acquire or modify behaviours, skills, values and preferences as we go through life. It occurs as part of education, personal development and training. It can be goal directed or it can be aided by motivation. Learning involves synthesis: putting together different pieces of information and connecting the dots. We do this right through our lives.
We have memory. Memory is a process by which any information that you come across is encoded, stored and retrieved when you need it. There’s an important reason why we don’t remember things when we need them. If you save a file with a certain name, you can retrieve it only if you remember and use the exact file name. For something to be accessible to you, you need to store it well. That is one of the reasons why we all remember things that have emotional salience to us. You can recall a story than a fact.
Every behaviour is provoked by a stimulus. That stimulus can be something as mild as the attitude of the person opposite to you and which makes you very angry. A lot of our behaviours find roots in our childhood. We also learn through modelling. We watch people around us and we end up believing that’s the right way to behave. For example, when you lie to someone, in front of your child, the child models its behaviour on you and the child thinks that it is okay to lie. Humans are social beings. There is no universal behavior that is acceptable everywhere. What is acceptable in one group, community or society may not be acceptable in another. A lot of our behavior is also driven by the lessons we learn from the environment.
Neurodiversity
We all know about Elon Musk and that he is famous for his Space X. He is also famous for one more thing. He went public with saying, ‘I am neurodiverse. I don’t think, feel, behave and act like other people.’ He has acknowledged his neurodiversity as high functioning autism spectrum disorder, where one has problems with language, communication and socialisation. Elon Musk’s behaviours were laid down in his childhood. When you have that kind of brain development, you may lack empathy, which is one of the reasons why he can be brutal. If you read his biography, he’s a CEO who can fire someone who has worked with him for 15 years at the drop of a hat.
He is a living lesson that people who are neurodiverse can have enormous inbuilt potential. Bringing out that potential is very important. People who are in the family or those who work with you may be neurodiverse. If only you’re able to put aside the problems that they have, you can unlock their potential. Some parts of the brain can be super normal and they can work really well.
When one has a problem, you must ask: ‘Is it a problem in learning? Is it a problem with memory? Is it a problem with behavior?’ This is especially relevant if you’re dealing with a child or a young person in your house, who’s struggling a little bit. Then you must ask: Is this a problem that’s developmental? Is this a problem that’s acquired? Maybe they were perfectly alright until a certain point in time, but they now seem to be experiencing a problem. The two are very different. The problem could be with your wiring, your psyche or your circumstances. The solutions are not one and the same. Neurodiverse people find themselves as round peg in a square hole—be it school, college or organisation. Unfortunately, our education system doesn’t differentiate the two. It’s very important that we understand where the problem is, in order to find the solutions.
Aptitude
We must know about aptitude also and that’s extremely important in the workplace. To put it very simply, aptitude is what comes very naturally to you- your innate potential. If you put an accounting temperamental guy in marketing and sales, it can be a disaster and vice versa. You will be surprised that a very large number of people find themselves in the wrong department. Their aptitude is for something, but they are being made to work in some other way.
One very global workplace aptitude check that I ask people is: are you a front office guy or a back office staff? Fundamentally, front office guys like to shake hands with and talk to people. They like connecting with people. They can push through and even sell a snowball to an Eskimo. If the guy is meticulous, knows everything, goes by the book, looks down at each thing and goes by a checklist, then I know he is a back office guy—a process oriented person. They can’t do each other’s jobs. Knowing your attitude becomes so important in terms of life and success. It is very often set in childhood but it can be modified through education and learning.
Neuroscience – The developing brain and how it affects learning, memory
Vivek Misra, Director-Neuroscience & Neurotechnology, Buddhi Clinic
The human brain weighs about three pounds and it is the ultimate organ of adaptation. It has some 86 billion neurons that form 100 trillion connections with each other, numbers that ironically, are far too large for the human brain to fathom.
In 1949, the famous neuroscientist and neuropsychologist, Donal O’Hebb, in his book, ‘The Organization of Behavior,’ postulated how neurons fire together, wire together. They make a special bond. After 16 years of this postulate, it has been proven molecular biologically and chemical composition wise also. What is strengthening of connections? I will give a very simple example. Fifteen years ago we would remember at least 10 or 15 phone numbers but today we can’t do that. The cells which were used to remember those numbers, are used now to remember passwords and ATM pins. Our brain re-adapts. The old connections are removed and new connections are made for different types of information.
The Neighbourhood Influence
Some information is acquired early in a critical stage or at a sensitive period while some information can be acquired at later stages of the life. Sometimes, it enhances the rapid development of the brain. It characterises the early childhood period or the brain’s lifelong capacity to grow and change- what everyone calls it neuroplasticity. Neurogenesis is in hippocampus making new memories and making new cells coming together. It goes up to 50 to 60 years of age. But on the other hand, higher cognitive functions like reasoning or skill development can stop at 16 years of age. Learning a foreign language gets harder with age. The brain development is influenced by the neighbourhood or what we call as our social environment.
It was found that when parents and even grandparents interacted more with a child, the child’s brain areas get activated and formed. In a study, two groups of children of 12 to 14 years of age were taken. One group was from the orphanage, who never had interaction with parents and the other group was children who had parents. They found that the children from the orphanage had lesser gray matter in the brain.
Factors such as parent-child relationship, peer relationship, prenatal and postnatal stress, psychoactive drugs and diet and gut bacteria play a role in a child’s brain development. There is growing evidence that if parents are exposed to drugs, it can impact the child. Though it’s not evident immediately at the birth, over a period of time, there are changes in the behaviour. If we can eat healthy, we can change our gut microbiome.
Training Based Solutions
Having talked about the problems, we must look at the solutions. Through training, the potential cognitive functioning can be vastly improved. Training effects in the developing brain are driven by a complex interaction between learning, brain development, genetic differences and prior experience. Depending on the type of training and the level of maturation of the individual, training may speed up development; improve the individual’s actualised genetic potential; or both.
On the one hand, there are great changes in neural efficiency during development, which could make this period well suited for neural interventions. On the other hand, there might also be limitations on the effects of training in childhood. That is, the maximum achievable performance could be constrained by the current level of structural brain development and cognitive functioning. Neuroimaging studies can provide a deeper level of insight in the underlying cognitive neural processes that are involved during training.
Brain Stimulation Tools
We have visual, auditory, sensory, language, attention, salience (what is important) and default mode networks (what brain does at rest). Through neuropriming, the brain can be stimulated for enhanced learning. Neuropriming is a form of brain stimulation that involves the use of electrical stimulus to alter the excitability of neurons in the brain. This technique is based on the principle of neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to reorganise and form neural connections in response to changes in the environment or behaviour.
Neurofeedback is another promising avenue and it is a form of biofeedback that uses real-time displays of brain activity to teach individuals to self-regulate their brain function. This technique has shown promise in treating a variety of mental health conditions, including ADHD, and depression. Another technique of brain stimulation is using binaural beats, which are an auditory phenomenon that occurs when two different frequencies are presented separately to each ear. It elicits the sensation of a third tone oscillating at the difference in frequencies of the two tones. tDCS or Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation is used to fine-tune brain circuits with electricity. Different non-invasive brain stimulation methods exist, each with its own strengths and target areas.
To conclude, the developing brain is responsive to a wide range of factors that modulate its development, beginning with preconception experiences of the parents, gestational experiences; and postnatal experiences. Just now, we begin to understand how different factors might interact with one another and how it’s going to produce a cumulative effect. The effect of early stress or psychoactive drugs are the more studied negative effects and are likely to be most powerful. On the positive side, early experiences such as tactile stimulation would appear to be more influential its ability to reverse some of the negative effects of stress and perhaps other psychoactive drugs.
Psychology – Childhood behaviours and their implications
Ms Ayushi Dilip, Resident Coordinator & Clinical Psychologist, Buddhi Clinic
Every child of a growing age will have some issues or the other. It’s completely normal. There are several reasons why personal behavioural problems can happen. There are three broad categories due to which behavioural problems occur and is explained by through Venn-diagram or the Biopsychosocial (BPS) model. First is biological causes, such as inherited defects, traumatic brain injuries during infancy, prenatal exposure to teratogens, toxoplasmosis, alcohol or other illicit drugs, perinatal environment and perinatal stress.
The psychological causes include temperament of the child, observational learning, behavioural conditioning and stage of the development that the child is in. Social/environmental causes include attachment style and parenting style; sibling rivalry and birth order; peer-influence; socio-cultural aspects and moral development.
BF Skinner proposed the operational learning theory. You condition a child based on rewards or punishments, given in fixed intervals or variable intervals. Social learning theory states that you learn through observation of role models. Piaget said that there are multiple stages of cognitive development as we go through stages such as sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operation stage. In every stage, there are different things that are explored.
Attachment and Parenting Styles
How do children develop emotionally and socially in their social environment? The attachment and parenting styles play a very important role. Does the child feel secure around their parents? Does the child feel like the parent is available for them? Is the child able to communicate the needs to the parents? There are broadly four types of attachment styles. The best one is the secure attachment style. The others are disengaged, ambivalent and avoidance attachment styles. In all these three, in the growing or developing stages, the parents do not meet the child’s needs in some way or the other. Obviously, it’s unintentional. Every parent has their own reasons for not being available for the child. But it does have an effect on the child’s development.
According to Erickson, in every stage of your life, you will go through some conflict. And if you deal with that conflict, your development is pretty smooth. For example, the first stage is trust versus mistrust. If you have issues in the first stage of development, say the child is not able to build secure, trusting relationships with the primary caregivers, it causes a lot of issues in the child’s behaviour. Children who have been separated from their parents have huge trust deficit and don’t move past the first stage. Moral development also happens when there is engagement with the environment and the child learns to solve their own problems and make decisions based on what’s appropriate; not based on if they will be punished or not.
Internalising or Externalising
There are two broad categorisations of behavioural problems. Either there is a lack in behaviour or there is too much of behaviour. A lack could be termed as internalising behavioural problems. The child may not be comfortable in their environment, it may withdraw, be extremely depressed, anxious; they may cry a lot, may feel worthless, and will demand excessive amount of attention. They may show withdrawn behavior, they may be shy and they would complain that they have physiological symptoms.
The child wants to avoid school all the time; they have complaints of stomach pain, leg pain or back pain. They feel extremely uncomfortable in their own bodies and the environment they are in. They find reasons to decrease engagement. An extreme of internalising behavioural problems is that the child gets so socially emotionally withdrawn that they may have different / bizarre ways of thinking; their thinking shifts from reality to fantasy. They try to find safety in their own ruminations and thought processes.
Another end of the spectrum is externalising behavioural problems, where the distress of the child may actually come out outwardly as abusive, aggressive and violent behavior; the child will be extremely hyperactive; they may or may not be able to sit in a place; they may be disruptive; they dismiss adults’ requests; they may be rude and argumentative. The bottom line is that all these problems stem from a space of wanting that the needs are met.
Assessments and Course Correction
The positive aspect is that there are assessments to identify and diagnose behavioural problems like Vineland Social Maturity Scale; Childhood Behaviour Checklist; NICHQ Vanderbilt Assessment Scales (for ADHD, etc); Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED).
The first agenda is to understand which stage of development the child is in. How is the child able to perform in a social context? How is the child able to adapt in relation to the chronological age? We find a social age for the child. It may be average, below average or above average. Based on that, we will come to an understanding of how much the child needs to be integrated in the society and what adaptive functional supports are to be provided or if we need to help the parents in engaging with the child.
When you deal with behavioural problems, follow the below steps:
- Notice changes in behaviour.
- Understand individual needs and provide support.
- Seek help from professionals to understand the root cause of the problem.
- Use positive or negative reinforcement to increase desired behaviour.
- Change the narrative; limit advising the child and have an open dialogue about their behaviour.
- Engage them in peer support groups.
- Model desired behaviour and have realistic expectations in terms of progress.
