Book: Your Brain at Work

Question 1

Your limbic system tracks your emotional relationship to what four things?

Answer 1

Thoughts, objects, people and events

Question 2

Your limbic system determines how you feel about what, moment to moment?

Answer 2

The world

Question 3

Which system, according to Rock, drives you behaviour, often quite unconsciously?

Answer 3

Your limbic system

Question 4

Your limbic system is made up of - or includes - what 5 brain regions - which are connected in various ways?

Answer 4

• Amygdala
• Hippocampus
• Cingulate gyrus
• Orbital frontal cortex
• Insula

Question 5

Without a limbic system, your basal ganglia could fire the right combination of motor neurons to get you out of bed, but once out of bed, you’d probably what?

Answer 5

Freeze

Question 6

Why would you ‘freeze’ without a limbic system?

Answer 6

In a world of infinite choices every moment, there is not enough time or energy to logically process all the possible options for what to do next.

Question 7

According to Dr Evian Gordon and Lea Williams, what is the overarching organising principle of the brain?

Answer 7

To classify the world around you into things that will either hurt you - or help you - to stay alive.

Question 8

The limbic system scans data streaming into the brain, telling you what two things?

Answer 8

What to pay more attention to - and in what way.

Question 9

What does Rock call it when the brain detects a threat that could endanger your life?

Answer 9

A primary threat

Question 10

What does Rock call it when the brain detects something that could help you survive?

Answer 10

A primary reward

Question 11

The limbic system is constantly making what kind of decisions?

Answer 11

Toward or away decisions

Question 12

As you experience emotions, your limbic system automatically becomes what?

Answer 12

Aroused

Question 13

The hippocampus is a large brain region involved in what kind of memory?

Answer 13

Declarative (Memory that can be consciously experienced).

Question 14

What is declarative memory?

Answer 14

Memory that can be consciously experienced.

Question 15

Your hippocampus doesn’t just remember facts, it also remembers what?

Answer 15

Feelings about facts. (The stronger you feel about something the easier it is to recall).

Question 16

The stronger you feel about something the easier it is to what?

Answer 16

Recall

Question 17

The amygdala is the almond-shaped region of the brain that sits just about the area responsible for smell, and is often thought of as what centre of the brain?

Answer 17

The “emotional centre”.

Question 18

What other parts of the brain does the amygdala work with?

Answer 18

The hippocampus (and other limbic regions).

Question 19

Which part of the brain is like the brain’s thermostat for feelings?

Answer 19

The amygdala

Question 20

Which part of the brain tends to become aroused in proportion to the strength of an emotional response?

Answer 20

The amygdala

Question 21

The limbic system fires up far more intensively when it perceives what, than what?

Answer 21

A danger, compared to a reward. (The arousal from a danger comes on faster, lasts longer and is harder to budge).

Question 22

“Toward” emotions are more what than “Away” emotions?

Answer 22

Subtle, more easily displaced, and harder to build on.

Question 23

According to Rock, everyone has a unique set of what?

Answer 23

“Hot buttons” that can trigger limbic system arousal.

Question 24

What does Rock call the triggers that have been discussed by psychologists and philosophers for centuries, and that also go by the names, ‘the unconscious’, patterns, gremlins, demons and issues?

Answer 24

“Hot spots”

Question 25

According to Rock, what are “hot spots”?

Answer 25

Patterns of experience stored up in your limbic system and tagged as dangerous.

Question 26

What example does Rock offer as a significant way that the limbic system can impair brain functioning, when overly aroused by real or imagined danger?

Answer 26

Generation of false confidence (increased adrenaline can help you to feel focused and more confident in your decisions, when in fact your ability to make the best decisions has actually been reduced).

Question 27

When the limbic system gets overly aroused, it reduces what?

Answer 27

The resources available for the prefrontal cortex functions (recall, understanding, deciding, memorising and inhibiting).

Question 28

What are the five functions of the pre-frontal cortex?

Answer 28

Recalling, understanding, deciding, memorising and inhibiting.

Question 29

When there are not enough resources for conscious processing, the brain becomes more what?

Answer 29

Automatic, drawing on either deeply embedded functions or ideas close to the surface (close to “the front of your audience”, such as recent events.) These are low-resource tools for your brain to use.

Question 30

One of the problems with limbic systems arousal is that you can become more likely to react to situations in what way?

Answer 30

Negatively, looking at the downside, and taking fewer risks, erring on the safe side (which while helpful in some settings isn’t helpful for selling services).

Question 31

An aroused limbic system increases the chances of making what?

Answer 31

Links when there may not be any. (Accidental connections or misinterpretations of incoming data, which happens through a rule of “generalising” - which is also affected by the law of recency, which happens because of the way that amygdala holds memories)

Question 32

What two reasons cause accidental connections to be made when we are anxious?

Answer 32

1) The way that amygdala holds memories (in low res, holding only a small amount of data, making it easier to respond to potential threats in milliseconds)
(2) The limitation to information process called “attentional blink” (the time gap required between identifying different stimuli) = more than half a second. You need half a second before the mind is free to think about something new.

Question 33

In the phenomenon where you need half a second (before your mind is free to think about something new), but where you hear a few words before the mind is free to think about the new thing, and your attention goes to an internal voice (caused by arousal) what happens?

Answer 33

You literally don’t have have the time to hear the next few words said to you (This limitation to information processing is called ‘attentional blink’)

Question 34

When you experience over-arousal over a long period of time, it causes what kind of ‘load’?

Answer 34

Allostatic load (markers such as cortisol and adrenaline in the blood become chronically high).

Question 35

What three things happen when your allostatic load is high?

Answer 35

• Cortisol and adrenaline in the blood become chronically high
• You experience a permanent sense of threat and have a low threshold for additional threats
• It can kill existing neurons, and stop the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus

Question 36

James Gross, associate professor of psychology at Stanford University, developed a model of emotions that distinguishes what happens both before an emotion arises and once it is present. Before an emotion arises, there are 3 choices to be made. What are they?

Answer 36

Situation selection, situation modification and attention deployment

Question 37

Of the the three choices to be made before emotions arise, according to James Gross (associate professor oof psychology at Stanford) what is “situation modification”? Describe it.

Answer 37

Once you’re in a situation, what you can do to modify it.

Question 38

Of the the three choices to be made before emotions arise, according to James Gross (associate professor oof psychology at Stanford), what is “situation selection”?

Answer 38

Selecting what situations you want to be in.

Question 39

Of the the three choices to be made before emotions arise, according to James Gross (associate professor oof psychology at Stanford), what is “attention deployment”?

Answer 39

When you’re in a situation, attention deployment is where you put your attention.

Question 40

Once emotions kick in, what 3 options do you have?

Answer 40

1. Express your emotion(s)
2. Suppress them (“expressive suppression” - holding down the feeling and stopping the emotion being perceived by others)
3. “Cognitive change” - there are two examples of this phenomenon: labelling and reappraisal.

Question 41

According to James Gross (associate professor oof psychology at Stanford), what two options do you have to think differently about a situation when you’re in it and feeling emotions?

Answer 41

1. Labelling (put a label on your emotions)
2. Reappraisal (changing your interpretation of an event).

Question 42

When dealing with situations once our emotions kick in why is emotional suppression often ineffective?

Answer 42

1. Research shows that people are often really bad at it - 2. It inhibits memory, as if the person is consciously focusing their attention elsewhere, as it takes a lot of cognitive resources, leaving fewer for paying attention to the moment.)