Week 1 Flashcards
1
Q
What is the Brain For?
A
- Contains resources for growth, survival and reproduction
- Regulates Autonomic Nervous System
- Regulates Immune System
- Regulates Endocrine System
- Uses resources to seek and secure new resources
2
Q
Triune Brain
A
- Reptilian Brain
- Mammalian Brain
- Neocortex
3
Q
Neocortex
A
- Known as Homo Sapiens Brain
- Frontal Cortex
- Intellect and Executive Functioning
- Language and Verbal Expression
- Conscious Thought and Self Awareness
- Organises conscious thought, problem solving and self-awareness
4
Q
Mammalian Brain
A
- Limbic System
- Wrapped around the Reptilian Brain
- Emotions and Feeling Tones
- Somatosensory and emotional experiences
- Implicit Memory, Learning and Emotion
5
Q
Reptilian Brain
A
- Instinctive Responses
- Brain Stem
- Body Sensation and Impulses
- Relatively unchanged through evolution
- Activation, arousal, homeostasis and reproductive drives
6
Q
The Evolving Brain
A
- All the sections continue to evolve
- Creates complex vertical and horizontal neural networks
- Mustn’t oversimplify as they are connected and contribute together to behaviour, thought and emotion
7
Q
Human Brain Development
A
- Reptilian Brain is fully functioning at birth
- Mammalian Brain development begins at birth
- Organised through experience
- Where our attachment styles develop
- Neocortex development begins to develop from 2 years and continues maturing into the 20’s
8
Q
Early Childhood Experiences
A
- Learning in 2-3 years happens before:
- Explicit memory
- Emotional regulation
- Perspective taking
*
9
Q
Neurons
A
Microscopic processing units that make up the nervous system
10
Q
Network of Neurons
A
Neurons are organised to enable learning, memory and behaviour
11
Q
Repeated Actions
A
- Create neural patterns that become stronger
- Once embedded they are hard to break
- Once something repetitive is learned it is not then unlearned (music or Addiction)
- Anything done repetitively changes the brain
12
Q
Why do Humans get Anxiousq
A
- We have capacity for great imagination but we can create future scenarios that are scary
- Primitive parts of our brain are always on alert for danger
- If early experiences are scary or overwhelming then primitive brains are always alert
- Amygdala is on alert to fight, flight or freeze to activate quickly
13
Q
What is Brain Plasticity?
A
- The ability of the nervous system to change in response to experience
- Neurons and neural networks integrate to engage in more complex activity
- Language requires emotion and memory to be integrated to tell a story
14
Q
Neural Architecture
A
The nervous system is sculpted by experiences and the environment
An enriching environment leads to complex and robust neural networks
Our brain grows as it engages in challenging experiences
These integrate to enhance learning
15
Q
Emotional Tolerance
A
- When we experience emotion dysregulation and feel scared, cold wet or hungry
- The ability to vocalise this distress
- Then the ability to come back to a regulated state emotionally
16
Q
Affect Regulation
A
- Ability to control our emotions
- Available in a wide range of situations and emotions
- Ability to regulate distress back to a regulated state
17
Q
Counselling and the Evolved Brain
A
- Our brains are evolved to predict advanced, complex situations
- Our primitive brains have not evolved to keep up and are therefore always on alert
18
Q
Reflection & Introspection
A
- Our brain perceives experience unconsciously and in a split second
- Relies on information bases on unconscious feelings
- Attending to reflection and introspection allows us to break negative unconscious patterns of behaviour
19
Q
Trauma
A
- Early trauma experiences wire the brain and shape how we construct reality
- Lays foundation for how we continue to experience difficult situations in the future
- We can deconstruct this consciously to learn how trauma affects our present interactions
20
Q
Two Separate Memory Systems
A
- Explicit Memory
- Episodic - Experienced Events
- Semantic - Knowledge and concepts
- Implicit Memory
- Procedural - Skills & Actions
- Emotional Conditioning
21
Q
Explicit Memory
A
- Autobiographical Narratives
- Conscious Experience of remembering
- Declarative
22
Q
Implicit Memory
A
- Formed through emotions
- Non-verbal experiences
- Core beleifs often learned like this
- Non-Declarative
23
Q
Triggers
A
Implicit memory is activated
Creates emotional state that happens without cognitive awareness
Ecker et al 2013
24
Q
Memory Reconsolidation
A
- Brain’s innate mechanism for new learning
- Revises existing memories
- Updates memory content at subjective experience and neural coding
- Experience-driven process of neurological change
25
Q
Erasure
A
The elimination of an acquired emotional response to identified triggers
26
Q
Emotional Schemas
A
- A mental model learned long ago
- Emotionally intense experiences
- Controls behaviour and/or state of mind
- Not consciously aware
27
Q
Allostasis
A
- Feldman-Barret 2017
- Psychobiological process that brings about stability through change of state consequential to stress
- How the body returns to homeostasis in stressful situations
- Animals and micro-organisms model their world with allostasis
- Built on past experiences
- ‘What is this new sensory input most similar to?’”
28
Q
Emotional Learning
A
Emotions are perceiver dependent
- Are constructions of the world, not reactions to it.
29
Q
Three Steps of Memory Reconsolidation
A
- Reactivated, symptom-generating target learning experienced in awareness
- Experience of mismatch/prediction error destabilises the target learning’s neural encoding
- Experience of counter-learning drives unlearning, nullification, re-encoding and replacement of target learning.
OR
- Experience Memory Activation - conscious
- Recall doesn’t match current experience (neural coding) - feels stressfull
- Adjust memory to unlearn, nullify and recode new information
30
Q
Reactivation
A
- Deliberate use of seemingly salient cues that trigger schemas
- These underlie the person’s problem
- e.g. “There’s no point in me trying to achieve anything meaningful because I fail at everything I touch”.
31
Q
EXPERIENCE OF MISMATCH/PREDICTION ERROR
A
- When the world is different from expectations
- Brain can quickly adapt to new knowledge and encode it to long term memory
- Can be re-encoded quickly by any new learning that comes next
32
Q
Counter-Learning
A
- A few repetitions during therapy of the mismatched experience
- Experience reality of the learning situation and contradicting perception of the situation
- Awareness of both and acknowledge them at the same time
33
Q
Preparatory Steps of Memory Consolidation
A
A. Symptom identification
B. Retrieval of target learning
C. Identification of disconfirming knowledge
34
Q
Symptom Identification
A
- Clarify what the symptoms are
- Could be behaviours, emotions, thoughts or somatic to be eliminated
- Recognise cues and context that evoke or intensify the symptoms
35
Q
Retrieval of Target Learning
A
- Draw out explicit memory and implicit emotions associated with the schema
- Learning that is targeted for change must be felt deeply with emotion and body
- Must be well defined in words and concepts
- Implicit memories can feel elusive at first but can become salient with introspection
36
Q
Identification of Disconfirming Knowledge
A
- Look for vivid personal experience that contradicts the schema
- Contradictory experience might already be part of the person’s knowledge
- It may be created by finding new experience
37
Q
Memory Reconsolidation Steps
A
- Three Step Process
- Reactivate the emotional response
- Unlock the synapses maintaining the implicit memory
- Create new learning and unlearn, rewrite or replace the neural network
38
Q
Opening a Neural Circuit Without Processing
A
- Once a neural circuit has bee unlocked it automatically relocks
- Unless something is done to erase or overwrite it in a few hours circuit will restabilise
- The person is back at square one and will experience the trigger in the same way
39
Q
Unlocking Implicit Memory
A
- We used to think Implicit Memory, schemas and avoidance could not be changed
- Neuroscience indicates that we may unlock neural pathways and erase implicit memory networks
- We can substitute new learning networks erasing the old ones
40
Q
Three Key Themes of
A
- Regulation of Autonomic Nervous System
- Neural Networks and how they form
- Memory Reconsolidation
- Process in brain that prunes old networks that are no longer useful
41
Q
Regulation of the Autonomic Nervous System
A
- The fight, flight, freeze responses
- How we can regulate these responses
42
Q
How Neural Networks are Formed
A
- How neural networks refer to different parts of self
- We don’t have one solid identified part of ourselves
43
Q
Memory Reconsolidation Process
A
- Process in brain that prunes old networks that are no longer useful
- Discovered in the 1990’s
- In exchange for new networks
44
Q
Triune Brain
A
- Lisa Feldman-Barrett looks down on this model as oversimplified
- Actually a lot of Triune Brain Theory is relevant
- We acknowledge that three aspects of the brain are integrated and work together
- Reptilian Brain
- Mammalian Brain
- Neocortex
