Your Brain Re-sets in the Blink of an Eye
Your Brain Re-sets in the Blink of an Eye
Up until recently, the thought was that we blink simply to lubricate our eyes. Well, that is not the case any longer. Sure we blink to lubricate our eyes but it also appears that we blink to reset our brain. Re-set our brain? What does that mean?
To get an small understanding of this, let me tell you that with new technology such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging neuroscientists can now identify different brain networks. It is so cool! Neuroscientists can map out the circuitry of the brain and identify conditions such as Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety and even aggressive individuals such as psychopaths.
As best as I can figure out, there are 7 primary networks in the brain. Each doing their own thing while communicating with the others. For a person to be "normal" whatever that means, all the circuits need to communicate in harmony with one another. For this discussion, I want to talk about 2 of them. I'm not going to give you the technical names of them. Why do that, it would just make this blog more difficult to read. The 2 networks are the "Intentional" and "Resting" networks. New research from Japan suggests that blinking is an active process that causes the brain to go off-line (from the Intentional, (Attentive) Network, into a more reflective (Resting Network) mode, before giving renewed attention (back into the Intentional Network). Tamami Nakano of Osaka University and collegues studied blinking and the network re-setting and she wrote about their findings in the December 24 online issue of the "Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, PNAS." Nakano and colleagues appear to show that eye blinks actively cause attention disengagement, they are not a response to it. They found that spontaneous eye blinks are closely followed by the reciprocal activation of the "Resting" network, and the deactivation of the "Intentional" attention network.
"The results suggest that eye blinks are actively involved in the process of "Intentional" attentions disengagement during a cognitive behavior by momentarily activating the "Resting" network while deactivating the "Intentional" attention network." This conclusion was made by Nakano nad her associate's that can be found from the article "Blinking Causes Brain to Go Off-Line."
"The present study indicates that even while we pay attention to the external world, the shift from the external "Intentional" attentive brain network to the internal processing "Resting" brain network dramatically ocurs every time we blink," Tamami says. "I think that blink is closely related to resetting of the brain network and chunking the flow of visual information for memory." This quote is from the article "Blinking gives your brain a break."
OK, that was some back ground information. IN a practical sense we have all re-set our brain networks without being aware of it. How many times have you rubbed your eyes and blinked while taking an exam? A ton of times I am sure over your life. Or what about when you are driving and you are tired? You feel yourself dosing off a little bit and force yourself to blink a couple times to refocus. So, if you are stressed, need to refocus for a task, or simply feeling anxious or down, blinking can be helpful!