Enjoy the Silence-The Neuroscience of Socio-Emotional learning

"Words like violence break the silence

Come crashing in, into my little world

Painful to me, pierce right through me

Can't you understand? Oh my little girl."

Generation Xer's or anyone with an affinity for 80s music might recognize those words above.  Vivid are my memories of seeking solace alone on the bus after an exhausting day trying to scramble my way through high schools' toughest subject....a game I like to call "Social Snakes and Ladders".  Every time I thought I had made progress toward Square 100 at the top of the board, I'd land on a "snake" which would slide me down to lower levels of the pecking order, so to speak.  Battle worn, licking my emotional wounds, I'd head straight for my 5th row seat on the bus, whip out the Sony Walkman and get lost in the sounds of Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds or Platinum Blonde. 

"Vows are spoken to be broken

Feelings are intense, words are trivial

Pleasures remain, so does the pain

Words are meaningless and forgettable"

So while the boys of Depeche Mode implored me to "Enjoy the Silence"........I couldn't.  Thoughts of insecurity, low self-esteem and the theatre company of woulda, coulda, shouldas used to perform at their "Vaudeville" best on the grandest stage of all.......my brain.  And my neuronal "audience" had no problems staying transfixed for this spectacular performance...."Encore! Encore!", they'd yell.  Assuming maybe some of you can relate to my youthful experiences (hopefully....or I really am pathetic), I use this entry to perhaps shed some insightful light on just how impactful those years of "Daze and Confused" really are to who you are today.

I don't think it's a surprise to many that most of our most important emotional and social learning occurs during our early years when our primitive brains are in control.  A great deal of learning takes place before we have the cortical systems for explicit memories (more on that in a bit), problem solving or perspective.  Ah, perspective.  There's a biggie.  Imagine having 30 pieces of a 100 piece puzzle and no cover box to refer to.  Consequentially, many of our most important socio-learning experiences are organized and controlled by reflexes, behaviours and emotions outside of our awareness AND distorted by our immature brains.  Think about the times when you've experienced an emotion for seemingly no reason at all or one that so does not fit the situation at hand (we'll call that an "over-reaction").  "Where in the hell did that come from?', you might ask yourself.  Enter implicit vs explicit memories.

A chart to peruse.  Please note those points in red.

Implicit Memory	Explicit Memory
Early Developing	Late Developing
Highly functional at birth	Matures later with the hippocampus and cortex
Sub-cortical/Amgydala bias	Cortical/Hippocampus bias
Emotional	Organized by language, visual images
Visceral/ Sensorimotor	Organized within episodes and narratives
Context-free and lacks source allocation	Conscious organization of experience
Procedural learning	Construction of Narrative to put Emotion into Context
Behavioural patterns

That emotional reaction or subcortical behaviour you couldn't put your finger on before? That's a triggered implicit memory.  Its key to remember that memory, whether subconscious or not, is an associational process where things that happen at the same time become linked to each other.  Implicit, subconscious memories, created in dysfunctional situations years before can repeatedly lead us to re-create unsuccessful but familiar patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour.  One only needs to see a chiropractic political meeting in action to see evidence of what we're talking about here.  

The two neurological structures involved here (with a little help elsewhere) are the amygdala and hippocampus.  The amygdala, which is the predominant limbic structure when we're young, loves to accentuate sensory inputs which heightens awareness of specific aspects of the environment and then generalize them.  Think, "Mountain out of a mole hill"...think, "Judging an entire book by its cover"....think, "Every thing bad always happens to me".  The hippocampus, on the other hand, can inhibit reactionary limbic responses, over active attention and stimulus response.  Its involved in the ability to discriminate and make distinctions without over generalizing.  When we can retrieve an implicit emotion from the "files" of the amygdala and transfer it over to the hippocampus, we can begin the process of weaving that emotion into a conscious narrative that puts context to that emotion.  Processing our emotions and behaviours this way offers us the possibility of writing a new story.  There are reciprocal connections between the amygdala and the hippocampus, so the activity of one can inhibit the activity of the other.  As a pertinent aside, stress hormones has been shown to damage neural networks of explicit memory in the hippocampus.  Ummm, well that explains a lot.

So how do we know which structure predominates in our life.  Well, I bring us back to my youthful days of listening to Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence".  Silence is an ambiguous stimulus that tends to activate systems of implicit memory in the undisciplined mind.  When there's silence between 2 people, many people (especially in new relationships)will automatically assume that the other person is thinking critical thoughts.  Now there's a high school flashback....."She thinks I'm ugly", "He thinks I'm fat".  Similar reactions occur during relaxation without distraction.  Emotions, images and thoughts that emerge in conditions of low stimulation or absence of distraction may hold clues to early implicit learning.  Those who need constant activity and distractions to "relax" have implicit memories that are driving them.

How do you like silence?

......Words are very unnecessary

They can only do harm.......