Somatic Markers, the Book Marks to Action by W. Hock Hochheim

[** Serge **]

http://www.hockscqc.com/articles/somatic-markers/index.htm

“ Soma-Do ” and “ Soma-Don't " - Somatic Markers, the Bookmarks to Action, or...How I Learned to Put Think in My Hink ! by W. Hock Hochheim
 

 

 

“Trust your gut!”

“If your ‘hinky alarm' goes off, follow-up on that instinct.”

“Trust your intuition.”

“Trust your “Spidey Sense.”

It is your “Gift of Fear.”

“Go with your “ESP.”

Cops are told this. Soldiers are told this and millions of citizens are also. No doubt you have too. The common thread in this message, be it spoken or unspoken? You have been given these natural magic, survival instincts. If you will just turn this sixth sense free, turn it loose, you will be interconnected with the karma of the universe and this magic Spiderman tingle with flash you when trouble is a brewing. It will also flash you with solutions to escape or fight and survive.

I have often wondered through the decades just how smart all this "inner-self, natural-magic" really is? And, I have always felt this 6th Sense approach left way too much to chance, and worse, it also sent a subtle message that people shouldn't work hard to answer the true, situational, survival questions of life, crime and war, the specific “who, what, where, when, how and why.” I mean, why bother working, because in the end? I have my God-given intuition, my gift of fear to save me. This midelading message is a form of magical thinking. Hinky-dinky-do! Did you know that you put the think in all the "hink?"

Do I believe in the hinky mysterious? I am a skeptic for sure and I do like answers, but mysterious things do happen. It seems every year, every decade we have better explanations for hinky things. For example, It was common knowledge in the field of brain research that everyone interested in neuroscience needed to “ buckle-up, Bones,” because this 21st century was going to boldly go where no brain research has gone before.

The advice from experts back in the late 1990s and early 2000s was that “ anything you thought you knew about the brain and performance. You'd better look again.” What I didn't know was that you'd better look again and again and again, because the information was blasting out yearly. The first thirteen years of this century were outstanding in brain study discoveries. In some cases, what people believed in 2008, is even different in 2013. While the doctors are busy trying to cure disease, much of this new research also relates to fighting, to combat, to ambushes, war and crime.

What has all this brain talk got to do with Spiderman's Gift of Fear? And what the heck is a Somatic Marker? Somatic is a simple word used for many medical divisions. In its most generic form it means “of the body.” We laymen are most familiar with the common term "psychosomatic" –which means “ of the mind and body.” And many of us have heard of the Somatic Nervous System – which is how we voluntarily control body movements through the skeletal muscles with muscle contractions.

For the last few decades much research has been conducted to prove mind and body connections for events like reading the environment and deciding what to do when faced with very sudden stress. A somatic marker is like a bookmark in a book, an established collection of information in the brain that someone can suddenly “flip open,” snap too, and save decision-making time and take quick action.

Technically, as Dr. Antonio Damasio would explain it, “when we have to make complex and uncertain decisions, the somatic markers created by the relevant stimuli are summed to produce a net somatic state. This overall state directs our decision of how to act."

In the 2013 book, Anatomy of Violence by Criminologist and neuroscientist Doctor Adrian Raine he reports: “A good mind makes good decisions, and to do so it has to rely on " somatic markers" produced by the body. These somatic markers are unpleasant autonomic bodily states produced when one is contemplating a risky action or a difficult decision. These somatic markers have flagged negative outcomes in the individual' s past, and are stored in the somatosensory cortex. This input is then transmitted to the prefrontal cortex, where further evaluation and decision-making takes place. If the current situation has been previously linked to a negative outcome, the somatic marker for that past event will sound an alarm bell to the decision - making a reasonable action will be taken. This process may act at either a conscious or a subconscious level and can be thought of as helping to reduce the range of options in decision-making."

On somatic markers, Neuroscientist, Dr. David Eagleman says, “when something bad happens, the brain leverages the entire body (heart rate, contraction of the gut, weakness of the muscles, and so on) to register that feeling, and that feeling becomes associated with the event. When the event is next pondered, the brain essentially runs a simulation, reliving the physical feelings of the event. Those feelings then serve to navigate, or at least bias, subsequent decision making. If the feelings from a given event are bad, they dissuade the action; if they are good, they encourage it.” All in micro-seconds.

Your perceived “gift of fear” is very much a learned process and you don't even know it. Adding to this, you also have a virtual team at work that is your subconscious - working independent of somatic markers. Dr Eagleman reports that your subconscious is like a two-party system of emotions and reason, and are always at work underpinning what you do and say. What you think about consciously floats to the top of your awareness, but your committee has been working on this message, working on this problem. It uses the sum total of your education and experience and tries to offer solutions, ALL IN A FEW MICRO SECONDs, mind you. (And yes, this system may also use somatic markers in the mix.)

The sum total of your experience creates these bookmarks as well as trains your "mental committee," even if its from only watching cop shows on television. It takes in everything for evaluation. But obviousl, real experience is better because it creates a stronger emotional/somatic bookmark to rely on.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Daniel Kahneman, in his best selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow states that "there is evidence that we are born prepared to make intentional attributions: infants under one year old can identify bullies and victims." in a very confused and primitive way by using the most rudimentary testing with basic shapes in an aggressive cartoon. But as people age, they "can learn to think statistically, but few people receive the necessary training."

It is not breaking news that your mind can be educated. Of course we know this. But, it might be news for some of you that your “hinky,” your “gut instinct,” your “gift of fear,” your magical “Spidey sense” is really the sum total of your absorbed education. You will still have to work extra hard to answer the who, what, wear, when, how and why questions of survival, war and crime. You must educate and refine the so-called Spiderman sense. THIS collective is where most of your actual, situational, intuition responses come from. Learned behavior.

The true gift of fear is mostly the gift of this educational process, not some kind of inexplicable, magical 6th sense. Don't leave your life to chance and depend on magical thinking. Fortune favors the prepared. Educate yourself. You do put a whole lot of the think in your hink.

W. Hock Hochheim  © 2013

[DavidManise]

Quelqu'un qui cite du Kahneman et du Damasio ne peut pas être entièrement mauvais...  donc j'ai lu. 

Précisément ce que je pense de l'intuition.  Un super outil de reconnaissance de patterns déjà connus qu'on a trop souvent tendance à nier ou négliger...  et aussi à prendre parfois pour du cash alors que parfois "ça se trompe".

David

[Bomby]

Super texte, merci Serge.

Ce qui est notamment très encourageant à mes yeux est la clarification apportée sur le point que, contrairement à ce qui était parfois supposé jusqu'à il y a peu (je pense par exemple à l'ancienne théorie, pédagogiquement pratique mais finalement inexacte, du cerveau reptilien), les réactions dites "intuitives" face à un danger ne relèvent en réalité pas d'un pur instinct mais utilisent à grande vitesse (trop grande pour que la conscience y accède) les données accumulées dans le cerveau par l'expérience et l'acquisition de connaissances.

Donc, se préparer paye. En tout cas si c'est fait intelligemment.

Précisément ce que je pense de l'intuition.  Un super outil de reconnaissance de patterns déjà connus qu'on a trop souvent tendance à nier ou négliger...  et aussi à prendre parfois pour du cash alors que parfois "ça se trompe".

Peut-être que, précisément, l'intuition nous induit parfois en erreur si on a "stocké" des données erronées ou irréalistes. D'où encore une fois l'intérêt essentiel du sens critique.

Peut-être aussi que, l'expérience réelle laissant dans le cerveau si je comprends bien une plus forte empreinte que la connaissance acquise théoriquement, la mauvaise interprétation d'une expérience forte passée peut fausser les réactions et donc nous tromper en partie. D'où probablement donc l'intérêt d'un debriefing méthodique et éclairé des évènements marquants que l'on traverse...

Mais si l'on est vigilant sur ces points, je doute que notre intuition nous conduise souvent dans la mauvaise direction.

Cordialement,

Bomby

[Ecto]

Je suis en train de lire "Deep survival" de Laurence Gonzales et cela va tout à fait dans ce sens. J'aimerai vous relater une des histoires du livre qui tend à prouver ce fonctionnement :

En suisse, 1911 Edouard Claparède réalisa une expérience sur une patiente de 47 ans qui n'avait pas de mémoire à court terme.
Un jour où il la salua comme chaque fois en lui serrant la main, il avait caché une punaise dans sa paume. La réaction est évidente, la patiente la retira brusquement.
Le lendemain elle avait complètement oublié l'incident, mais son subconscient non. De ce fait, alors qu'elle était incapable d'expliqué pourquoi, cette femme ne parvenait plus à serrer la main de son médecin.

Son instinct savait, la partie émotive de son cerveau, la plus rapide, avait créé un "emotionnal bookmark" qui se déclenchait à chaque fois qu'une situation similaire se présentait, de manière complètement indépendante de ses cognitions.

Notre instinct est effectivement construit par nos expériences et bien que dans la plupart des cas il nous est bénéfique, si on se trouve dans une situation dont il n'a aucune expérience, il sera inutile voir même dangereux. D'où l'utilité d'expérimenter sans cesse, physiquement, en vrai et pas seulement de manière théorique, cognitive.