Three All in the Mind podcasts related to Covid-19, and its oblique links with boredom
There are lots of interesting and useful podcasts out there. I’d like to share 3. The first podcast discusses the psychological and neural impact of lockdown:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-brain-in-isolation/12201054
One contributor at the start of lockdown estimated that most people can cope with 3 months of social distancing. It’s not clear to me if that prediction has been confirmed for the vulnerable group he identified.
Another contributor focused on the fact that our brain quickly adapts to events of the previous day. He looked at adaptive processes at the neural level. It is often said that the cells that fire together wire together. Certainly, we know that the synaptic junctions between neurons grow every day. The growth appears to be greatest for the most active synapses. Increased activity strengthens connections.
Synaptic junctions reduce in size when we sleep. These reductions do not eliminate the relative increases arising from the previous day’s activity. Repeating activity in the same subset of synapses over time builds up connection in the long term.
This fits with the growing body of evidence showing that our experience reshapes our brain. For example, learning to juggle increases the volume of parietal cortex over a 3-month training period and right hippocampal volume increases during the course of training for London taxi drivers.
The podcast points out that though we are still talking with people, we are not using the full range of social behaviours – no touching, less reliance on facial expressions etc. This implies that the neural mechanisms regulating these components of social behaviour become less active and their interconnections weaken. The short-term impact of this is probably unclear but, theoretically, the contributor suggested that the connectivity of our brains has probably changed somewhat over the last 3 months. There is other evidence that repeated social isolation over the longer term alters brain connectivity. The podcast describes the case of an American prisoner who was in solitary confinement for many years. He had lost the ability to recognise faces by the time he was released. However, freedom enabled him to restore that capability because his daily experiences required him to develop that skill.
A couple of podcasts noted that people sometimes complain of increased boredom during the Covid-19 lockdown. It turns out that the following 2 podcasts review interesting research on boredom:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-benefits-of-boredom:-part-1/12249300
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-benefits-of-boredom:-part-2/12270824
I’ll indicate some of the research that particularly interested me.
· In the first podcast, 5 boredom categories were identified, 2 of which can be beneficial.
· Boredom is hypothesised to be triggered by failure to see value in an activity and/or overload.
· It was argued that boredom has a biological value in triggering activity and certain types can stimulate creativity.
· One study found a link between the following personality traits and boredom-stimulated creativity: openness to new experiences, internal locus of control, love of learning and interest in ideas.
Lots of people complain of boredom after sustaining a brain injury, so I’ve been wondering about potential ways of using these ideas to respond more creatively to clients’ boredom complaints.
Dr Rodger Weddell
Senior Consultant Clinical Neuropsychologist
Halliday Quinn Limited, Jul 13 2020