Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently Page 7
Sports became a respite for Robinson. He had natural athletic ability. Later winning a scholarship to UCLA, he became the university’s first four-letter man in basketball, baseball, football, and track. But reality soon began to creep in, and Robinson left UCLA after two years, convinced that “no amount of education would help a black man get a job.”1 After Pearl Harbor, Robinson enlisted in the army, but he had a rough time there. He was outspoken about how blacks were treated, particularly with the seating arrangements on buses. The result was a court-martial. Fortunately, Robinson was acquitted and received an honorable discharge in 1944. But still without any job prospects, he signed up to play black baseball in the Jim Crow leagues.
Robinson knew Branch Rickey’s motives weren’t entirely altruistic. Rickey was chasing a pennant. But it was Robinson who had to face real fear. He had to disprove the prevailing opinion, at least among the team owners, that blacks were incapable of playing in the majors. And for going against this overwhelming opinion, Robinson deserves the label “iconoclast.”
On opening day in 1947, Robinson endured an unending stream of racial epithets emanating from the Philadelphia Phillies’ dugout. Robinson later wrote, “Of all the unpleasant days in my life, [this day] brought me nearer to cracking up than I ever had been.2 It was almost enough to make him question his own ability. He entertained images of pummeling the Phillies’ bench.
And then came Robinson’s epiphany. As with every iconoclast, there is a point in time that stands crystallized in their memory as the moment when something changed their perception of the world. For Robinson, his fear subsided when he looked over at Rickey and realized, “Rickey had come to a crossroads and made a lonely decision. I was at a crossroads. I would make mine. I would stay.”3
Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Hotels refused to accommodate Robinson with his teammates. He received bags of hate mail. The lives of his wife and son were threatened. But his persistence paid off. His teammates rallied around him. Not because he was black, but because Robinson was a key player who helped the Dodgers win the pennant that year. As his athletic prowess became apparent, the fans supported him too. “The black and the young were my cheering squads. But also there were people—neither black nor young—people of all races and faiths and in all parts of this country, people who couldn’t care less about my race.”4
So how did Robinson do it? How does an individual squelch the fear of the unknown, the fear of physical harm, and the fear of social isolation? The answer lies in how his brain dealt with the second key function of iconoclasm: the fear response.
Fear: The Mother of All Stress
Fear feels bad. When you are scared, your body is under stress. Very few human behaviors are as stereotypical as the stress response. The triggers may vary from individual to individual, but the picture of stress is always the same. The blood pressure rises, and the heart starts beating faster. Sweat glands seem to blossom in locations that you didn’t even know existed. The moisture emerges in all the wrong places as the mouth dries up and with it the words coming out. Fingers tremble. The voice warbles and cracks, and the stomach flip-flops. Sometimes the body tries to compensate by lowering blood pressure, with the unfortunate result of feeling lightheaded.
The human stress response, although sometimes rearing its head in the most inopportune times, is part and parcel of our evolutionary history. Only the fittest have survived in what has been many times in the past a hostile environment. The world changes. Animals try to eat you. Others compete with you for food and reproductive rights. Yes, growing up as a species on the planet Earth is a stressful process.
But stress is different today. And while humans do not fend off saber-toothed tigers, we sure have our share of other stressors. The social fabric of society is far more complex than any culture that humans evolved in. And still, we carry the burden of millions of years of evolution. We possess a stress response system that evolved in very different circumstances than exist today. In fact, the stress system is so important, and so active, that it can override every other system in the brain. The stress system is not rational. It reacts when provoked, and this reaction is powerful enough to derail many of the most innovative people out there. The ability to tame the stress response represents the second great hurdle to becoming an iconoclast.
Let’s break down the stress response.5 There are two distinct components: the neural system and the hormonal system. The neural component of stress is controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which itself is divided into two subparts. One part of the autonomic nervous system, called the sympathetic system, becomes activated during stress, and the other part, called the parasympathetic system, is turned off during stress. Both parts of the autonomic nervous system connect the brain to the internal organs of the body. The autonomic nervous system can operate quite well without the brain, and so its connection to the brain is a fairly low-bandwidth connection that keeps the big kahuna apprised of system status. Not that the brain can do much about it. For example, you may become aware that something is amiss in your digestive tract, but if your autonomic nervous system decides that its GI contents must be purged, there’s no way your brain can stop it.
A vast network of internal nerves makes up the autonomic nervous system. These nerves are completely separate from the spinal cord. The sympathetic nervous system is made up of a network, called ganglia, that exists in parallel with the spinal cord. These ganglia can be found in the thorax, in the abdomen, and in the pelvis. They look like a vast disorganized spider web, and you can trace the nerves to organs such as the heart, stomach, and bladder. The sympathetic system sends nerves to salivary glands too, and when active, inhibits the production of saliva. It even dilates the pupils when you’re excited. And in an excitement of a different sort, the sympathetic nervous system is responsible for orgasm.
The other half of the autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic system, is just as important for human life as the sympathetic, but it doesn’t get as much attention, because it is responsible for the quiet, restorative aspects of life. The parasympathetic system has its own network too, accomplishing most of its business through a single large nerve branching off of the brain stem, called the vagus nerve. The vagus sends branches to all the same organs that the autonomic nervous system does, but its actions are opposite. The vagus, for example, slows down the heart. It stimulates salivary glands and speeds up the digestive process. And although the sympathetic system gets credit for the money shot, it is the parasympathetic system that is responsible for sexual arousal.
As you might have guessed, it is the sympathetic system that presents problems for the iconoclast. The sympathetic system causes all the physical manifestations of stress that are well suited for running away from predators or fighting with other humans. But these are primitive physical systems. None are well suited for, or really have anything to do with, creativity and innovation. If you’ve ever had a shot of epinephrine, you know that the physical response is so overwhelming that it is impossible to think. Indeed, that is the whole point of the sympathetic system: action without thought.
The other part of the stress response that gets a lot of attention is the hormonal side. Like neurotransmitters, hormones cause physiological responses in target organs. The main difference between a hormone and a neurotransmitter is that a neurotransmitter is released from a nerve ending at a specific location, while hormones are released into the bloodstream and circulate throughout the body. Because hormones course through the entire body, their effects are much more widespread than those of a neurotransmitter. The other big difference, which stems from the mode of release, is how long it takes for these systems to react. When the sympathetic nervous system fires, you feel the effects instantaneously. Because hormones have to be released into the bloodstream and circulate to their final destination, hormonal responses generally become apparent only after several minutes and sometimes hours.
There are scores of hormones in the human body, but as far
as the stress response goes, only one is important: cortisol. Cortisol is a steroid and is chemically identical to hydrocortisone—the same stuff you buy in the drugstore as an anti-itch cream. Cortisol is produced in the adrenal glands, which look like a small glob of fat sitting on top of each kidney. How do the adrenal glands know when to release cortisol? When the brain tells them to. Although interestingly, the brain doesn’t accomplish this through neuronal connections. When you encounter something stressful, a signal reaches a tiny part of the brain called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus contains several different groups of neurons related to hormonal functions. When the body is stressed the hypothalamus releases a chemical called CRH, which stands for corticotropin releasing hormone. CRH enters the bloodstream right next to the hypothalamus and flows about 1 inch, where it reaches the pituitary gland. The pituitary dangles from the underside of the brain, looking like a pair of mouse testicles. Here, CRH stimulates the release of yet another hormone, called ACTH (adrenocorticotropin releasing hormone). It is ACTH that finally enters the bloodstream, where it flows to the adrenal glands.
The hormonal stress response may seem convoluted, but there is good reason for using hormones in addition to neurotransmitters. While neurotransmitters cause instantaneous reaction in the body, the effect of hormones is more subtle and long lasting. Hormones direct different organs in the body to change their physical configuration, especially in response to stresses that don’t go away. Chronic stressors, such as physical injury or starvation, require the body to shift its resources to either repair damage or deal with an ongoing lack of nutrients. The human body is amazingly flexible in this regard. It is well evolved for dealing with the stresses that our ancestors encountered thousands of years ago.
Modern stress is different. If your stress system is activated, it is probably for a reason different from physical injury. Today, the major stressor for most people stems from social reasons. Social stressors come from conflicts with spouses, bosses, and competition with peers. Add on top of that an increasing perception of lack of control over the environment, and you have a recipe for ongoing stress that takes a toll on the body. The toll, of course, is collected in the form of all the major medical ailments, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
The brain is not immune from the effects of stress either. As the flashpoint for the stress response, the brain is the organ that initiates the cascade. The brain responds to perceived threats and activates the sympathetic nervous system, and the brain initiates the cascade of hormonal responses. On the receiving end, the brain remodels itself in response to stress. Some of the remodeling occurs at the neuronal level through simple learning mechanisms. Other changes occur under the effects of hormones such as cortisol. These physical changes may have wide-ranging effects on behavior. Repeated stressors, for example, cause changes in key parts of the brain related to decision making and even iconoclastic thinking.
The Accidental Iconoclast: Fear and the Dixie Chicks
Nobody knows the stress response like people who have had their life threatened. Time and again, history has shown how iconoclasts like Jackie Robinson are treated. The truly unpopular have been killed. We would like to believe that such possibilities are a thing of the past, but they are not. Sometimes the iconoclast arises out of the most unlikely circumstances, a sort of accidental iconoclast. Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, is exactly this type of iconoclast.
Maines’s comment on a London stage in March 2003 was almost an afterthought, an off-the-cuff remark between songs from someone well known for speaking her mind. But when Maines announced, “We’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas,” all hell broke loose. The United States was on the eve of invading Iraq, and support for Bush was at an all-time high. To make matters worse, patriotism and country music had always gone hand in hand, and Maines’s remark was taken as a direct insult by large segments of their fan base. Intentionally or not, Maines and the Chicks became iconoclasts when they took a stand against the dogma that said “country music = unflagging patriotism.” They were one of the most popular acts in country music, and overnight they plummeted to one of the most reviled targets.
Public destructions of their CDs looked eerily similar to Nazi book burnings. Emily Robison, who plays banjo and guitar in the band, recalled, “A radio station said they had our picture on the side of one of their vans, and they were just driving down the highway when a car pulled up with a shotgun and pointed it at them. Just because our picture was on their van.”6
The death threats were the worst. Maines received the brunt of them. One, in particular, was quite specific: you will be shot dead at your show in Dallas. Although Maines already had around-the-clock protection, she had to extend it to her family, including her parents. Three years later, Robison still shudders at what the Chicks endured. “It was like the McCarthy days, and it was almost like the country was unrecognizable.” Maines’s view of the conservative media: “If you don’t share their opinions, they label you as a terrorist or a person who doesn’t have any family values.”7
When the Dixie Chicks released their next album, three years after the incident, a curious thing happened. The tide of public opinion about the Iraq war had changed. Much of the United States supported troop withdrawal. The Chicks’ ties to country music, however, were damaged. Their single “Not Ready to Make Nice” floundered on Billboard charts but, at the same time, was the number-one download on iTunes. Maines understood what was going on with the radio stations that still wouldn’t give them any airtime: “When a hundred people e-mail you that they’ll never listen to your station again, you get scared of losing your job. They caved.”8
What is most impressive about Maines and the Dixie Chicks, like Jackie Robinson before them, is how they did not let their fear of public ridicule, or even fear of death, prevent them from standing up for what they believed. Where most people would succumb to these pressures, Maines learned to embrace her now very public role. “I feel a responsibility to do it now. I didn’t realize how quiet I was being. But it’s exhausting to keep doing it. You feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle. But, it’s just not in me to shy away from things that I truly believe in. I’m not afraid.”9
Maines’s comment illustrates a common attribute among iconoclasts and how they deal with fear. They transform the emotion into something else. While Jackie Robinson transformed his fear into anger, Maines changed hers into pride. Recognizing that fear can paralyze action, the iconoclast takes the autonomic arousal associated with fear and uses it for something productive. The prefrontal cortex is largely responsible for this override control, but before we get to how it does this, a closer examination of where fear resides in the brain is called for.
Fear Conditioning
Remember Ivan Pavlov, the good old Russian psychologist who got his dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell? He was the guy who discovered classical conditioning, the simplest form of learning. In classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus, such as a light or a bell, is paired with something that evokes a response, such as food. The latter is called an unconditioned stimulus (US) because it causes a response, such as salivation, on its own. The neutral stimulus is called a conditioned stimulus (CS) because pairing it with the US conditions the animal to respond to the neutral thing. In Pavlov’s experiments, the US was something desirable—food—so this type of learning is called appetitive conditioning. It doesn’t have to be that way. Classical conditioning also works for things that animals don’t like. Electric shocks, bitter liquids, loud noises, and air puffs to the eyeball are all common “unconditioned stimuli” used in aversive conditioning. Such tactics have been used as part of behavior modification therapy for things such as smoking cessation and invisible fences for dogs.
For fear conditioning, one brain structure serves as the critical processing center. About the size and shape of an almond, the amygdala lies deep within the temporal lobes just off the midline of the brain. The amy
gdala is a structure critical for emotional processing, and the bulk of the evidence supports its role as a gateway for fear vis-à-vis the autonomic nervous system.10
The amygdala also influences the functioning of cortical regions, including perception itself. In a famous series of experiments in the 1970s, neuroscientists discovered that the amygdala can fine-tune the response of neurons in the auditory cortex. First, the researchers used a technique in which they recorded from neurons in the auditory cortex while playing tones of different frequencies to the animal. Auditory neurons possess a tuning curve in which they respond maximally to a specific range of frequencies. The neuroscientists then picked the frequency that was just off the best frequency for a particular neuron, and paired that tone with an electric shock. After just a few such pairings, they found that the auditory neurons had shifted their preference to match the tone associated with the shock. Moreover, this change persisted for weeks. These results demonstrate the powerful effects of fear conditioning on perception itself. The amygdala, by associating a particular tone with a shock, rewired the cortex so that the brain became more attuned to this frequency. These changes are profound and long lasting.
Many scientists believe that fear conditioning cannot be undone. For an unpleasant stimulus like an electric shock, it doesn’t take long for fear conditioning to occur. Typically, it only takes a few pairings of sound and shock. If, however, you began presenting the CS without the shock, the animal will stop responding to the CS. The process is called extinction. For many years, scientists believed that the animal actually forgot the association of the CS with the shock. More recent evidence suggests otherwise. Although the responses to the conditioned stimulus diminish over time, it turns out that they are inhibited, not eliminated. This has important implications, because it means that conditioned fear responses can reappear with only the slightest provocation. The key structure for extinction turns out to be the prefrontal cortex. Although the amygdala is still necessary for the expression of fear responses, it is the prefrontal cortex that keeps it in check. Damage to the prefrontal cortex, or conditions in which the prefrontal cortex is occupied with other tasks, may result in the release of the amygdala brake and the reemergence of a fear response.