And now the holidays are approaching – a time for joy and connection, but also a time of increased stress, especially if experiencing the loss of elements of previous special seasons.
We know that deep breathing, spending time in nature, practicing gratitude, and cultivating the habit of giving to others all help nurture social and emotional health. My acronym for this is BANG!: breathing, appreciation, nature, giving.
I’d like to share with you two other glimpses into how our brains work, and then some practical tips based on these for strengthening social and emotional health during the pandemic, and particularly during the holidays.
One of my favorite exhibits in the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco is an eye-popping “illusion” called the Cheshire Cat. Normally our two eyes combine two slightly different images into a three-dimensional view of the world. In this experiment, a mirror diverts one eye to see a blank white surface to the side, while the other looks straight ahead at the face of a partner. The brain combines the two images, and you see an ordinary scene of your partner against a white background. No surprise.
But when you slowly move your hand against the side wall, as if erasing a whiteboard, something astonishing happens. Your partner’s face begins to disappear. Your brain prioritizes movement in the periphery even over faces, so that the white wall begins to replace your partner’s face.
Soon, you only see eyes and a mouth on a white background. And often just the mouth remains, like the grin of Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat after the body has disappeared.
Our brains prioritize mouths, and sometimes eyes, in interpreting the world. And today, masks often cover our mouths.
It was a hot summer in Parma, Italy, in 1992. At the university researchers were mapping brain pathways in Macaque monkeys, observing which neurons would fire as the monkeys planned and performed actions such as eating. The firing sequences were reproducible.
A graduate student entered the lab with an ice cream cone in hand – not part of the experiment. Unexpectedly, as the student brought the cone to his mouth, the monkey’s neurons fired, even though the monkey had not moved, as if the monkey had grasped the cone, moved it to his own mouth, and eaten.
The researchers dubbed this system “mirror neurons“, where the same neuron fires when an animal senses another’s actions as when the animal performs the action on its own.
Since the first paper was published in 1996, we’ve learned that in humans this is far more complex, with multiple interconnecting systems, but our brains are profoundly connected to others, directly experiencing their intentions, actions, and emotions.
Empathy has a foundation in neuroscience:
We had an extended family birthday celebration in my family in November. We aimed to make use both of mirror neurons and of the need to look closely at each other’s mouths and eyes.
Before the party, my wife and I drove to each household to drop off food and props for the party. We saw each one in person, at a distance, outside, with masks, and had brief conversations to catch up. We did contactless handoffs. They all felt our love and intentions and excitement at being together. But no one saw each other’s mouths up close.
Then all of us gathered online for singing, eating, drinking, telling stories, and watching a classic movie together. More time together, all in the same virtual space, and easy to see everyone’s mouth and eyes.
Each phase of the hybrid party made the other richer and more special. Kids – all of us – need both kinds of connection.
In addition to designing ways to maximize satisfying our brain’s need both for physical proximity and for face-to-face interactions in a time of masks and physical distance (be creative!), here are four other observations:
We are intensely social creatures, and also resilient and creative ones. We know that deep breathing, spending time in nature, practicing gratitude, and cultivating the habit of giving to others all help nurture social and emotional health. Adding insights from the above glimpses into the brain can amplify these benefits.