It's All In Your Head

Is it in your head or for real? Read on, dear friends, read on!

I really enjoy reading articles that talk about/learning about the role of the mind in different human processes...I find it pretty cool to see how the mind plays such a big role in so many things. It's very relevant to me in lots of areas of my life...I'm a tennis player, for example, and I've beaten opponents who've clearly been physically superior to me by just being dedicated, focused, resolved. The mind really has great power—it controls our interpretation and understandings of the universe around us, so it is curious to see how the mind can often deceive us.

This notion of the mind tricking us was the subject of an article I recently read in SEED: Science is Culture magazine. Reminisce, will you? I'm sure you're acquainted with (if you haven't endured it firsthand) the experience I'm about to describe. So imagine you're doing something physically grueling—running a marathon, playing an intense basketball game, fighting a lengthy tennis match, or so on. You're feeling incredibly tired. Your legs are dead. You're out of breath. You simply cannot make it—you have no energy left. Is it really so? Or has your mind given up?

New research suggest that the brain actually gives up before the muscles do. So new experimental research further implies that our physical limits are not so much in our muscles as they are in our minds. New study says, too, that we can push ourselves much harder when we expect to get a boost from sugar, way before the carbohydrates (the primary source of energy) are even absorbed and converted into usable energy. As far as expectation goes, a study published The Journal of Physiology states that athletes don't even need to swallow an energy drink to feel a boost.

The study was led by Ed Chambers, Matt Bridge, and David Jones at the University of Birmingham, and their goal was to get to the core of fatigue. Jones says “The issue revolves around what is known as central fatigue” rather than peripheral fatigue. Central fatigue refers to the central nervous system, the feeling of fatigue herein attributed to the signaling in neurons. Peripheral fatigue, meanwhile, refers to the actual muscles failing.

The study was conducted by producing three so-called energy drinks, though one of them was a placebo, containing no carbohydrates (all of the 'energy drinks' had their flavors masked, so the subjects could not tell which they were receiving). Subjects performed intensively on stationary bicycles, swishing their mouths with one of the three energy drink concoctions (not actually swallowing). The cyclists who got the energy drinks with carbohydrates performed better than those that got the placebo, suggesting some mechanism in the brain tipped off signaling for the presence of carbohydrates, thereby doling out extra energy to the muscles. This implies that the brain has more control over physical performance and endurance than the muscles. The power of the mind gets me kinda hyped. You too?! Well then prepare for more!

The group conducted a second part of the study where they had the subjects again rinse with one of three energy drink concoctions while in an fMRI (which shows what parts of the brain are active when humans are performing, either consciously or unconsciously, certain processes). In agreement with the first part of the study, only the subjects who had the 'energy drinks' that actually had carbohydrates had their anterior cingulate cortex and striatum show usage by the fMRI. These parts of the part are believed to regulate reward and motor control.

Further studies are being complete because of some limitations to the initial research, and loads of theorizing has already been done (I will spare you of that here, but if you're interested I advise you check out this). The point of this post is just to cover what I view as a very interesting idea—we are so thoroughly convinced of the notion that "perception is reality", but maybe it is not so. We must bring into question the things we think and feel and consider the possibility that the reality is something quite to the contrary. I am often enchanted to hear about how my mind tries to trick me, cause then I feel like I can become a better master of my body. That is, if I know what tricks to look for, I am better equipped to scrutinize and analyze my feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Anyhow, I intend to stay updated on this recent research, and if you're interested, too, just let me know and I can start my research now rather than later and do some more posts concerning the mind and its effect on the body and our interpretation of the world around us. I'll end on a crappy rhyming note: don't be a fool; don't let your mind rule!