Suppressing Depressing Thoughts

Have you ever heard the phrase: "Jangan benci Cikgu, nanti susah nak masuk ilmu ape yang dia ajar, fail exam nanti!". Here's a scientific look:

As I mentioned in one of my post, memories are stored in chain. When we learn, we can't take in only the knowledge into our memories, but also other things associated when we study the knowledge, for example, who was teaching it, the place where you study it, the book you read it in, or even the color of the writing (that's why colorful notes work better for remembering). We store a whole chain of memories instead of just the memory of the knowledge. The same is with recalling what we've learned. When we recall what we've learn, a chain of memories are brought up into consciousness. If the first time you heard about 'Napolean Bonaparte' was when teacher A taught you, recalling facts about Napolean will automatically bring up the image of teacher A who taught you about it.

Now, here's a brain fact:

"Our brains tend to repress the memories that we find depressing"

We can see this in people who survived from post-traumatic disorder. People suffer post-traumatic disorder after going through traumatic, or painful and depressing experience. Throughout the phase of the disorder, the patient is continually in a state of depression because he or she can still remember the traumatic experience. When doctors asked about the traumatic experience, the patient can recall the event in vivid details. But our brain has a defense mechanism to overcome this depression: by attempting to forget or repress the bad memories forever. After the patient is free from the disorder, we can ask the patient to recall back the memories of the traumatic experience. Surprisingly, the patient will forget most of the experience, the details become blurry, and sometimes, the patient don't remember at all! The brain was successful in repressing the bad memories.

The details of the events was forgotten because it was chained to the memory of the traumatic event, and our brains tend to repress the memories that are depressing. So, the event, along with all the details was somewhat 'erased' from our minds. The brain hasto do this in order for us to survive. If we voluntarily keep on replaying the bad memories, our brain will fail to impliment this defense mechanism, something wrong will happen to our brains. This can lead to schizophrenia, or in common words insanity or craziness. People who chose not to forget or let go off their traumatic memories are the ones most likely to become crazy or insane.

In learning, it is hard for us to recall what we've learned when the memory of the knowledge is chained to something that we hate or find depressing. This is especially true when we hate the person that is teaching us the knowledge, or even if we hate the environment we're studying in. Firstly, when we hate the teacher, we would most probably choose not to bother what he or she says. So one thing is that less memory is stored. Secondly, even if we do listen and try to remember what the teacher says, the memory of the knowledge is chained with the memory of the teacher. Remember that we recall in chains, so we can't recall what the teacher says without recalling the memory of the teacher. Since our brains will try to repress things that we hate or find depressing, the knowledge, along with the memory of the 'hated' teacher, will be repressed and forgotten.Same goes to the environment we study in. If we find the place or school we study in is depressing, it takes a lot more effort for us to take in and recall what we've learned. Everything is chained, so if we hate one part, the brain will try to repress the whole chain of memories, including our much needed knowledge

On Intelligence

A quick update on what I've learned recently. Lately I've been doing much reading, which left little time for writing, but don't worry, its not like I'm going to stop writing. Isn't writing with more knowledge better?

I read in the book 'On Intelligence' by Jeff Hawkins about, well, as the title suggests: Intelligence. It states that intelligence can be defined by a simple equation:

Intelligence = Memory <-> Prediction

I'm going to elaborate a little on this. Memory is everything we store in our brains. It could be our own experience, what we've heard or seen, or what we've read. Prediction is the ability to guess accurately what will happen next. In the equation above, intelligence is the interrelatednesss of memory and prediction. We predict things based on our past memories, based on what we've experienced before. Like a medical student can predict that this patient has this disease because he read somewhere in the textbook that the symptoms of this disease fits the patient. In mathematics we learn by steps until we can solve a mathematical question. The first thing we do is memorize the steps. We repeat and memorize the steps until one point where we don't have to memorize anymore and start predicting. "Oh, I've seen this equation before, and I know how I can solve this". You start predicting and automatically know what to do next and get to the answer.We predict at every, and even in the simplest levels, and its all based on memories. An example of everyday life is predicting your friend's voice. Your brain does this predicting unconsciously so you don't realize its happening. Even before your friend starts saying anything, your brain predicts how his voice will sound like, and when he starts to speak, your brain will acknowledge the prediction. Let's say if suddenly your friend starts to talk, and what comes out is not his voice but your Uncle's voice. Now wouldn't that be weird? Your brain feels that its prediction is violated, it will become confused, and you will start paying attention to the difference.


So basically, the more you read, the more you experience, the more memory you have. Predictions are based on past memories, hence the more memories, the more predictions you can make. Now that would make you more intelligent right? Not necessarily. Reading a lot stores a lot of memories, but without the ability to predict, the memories are for nothing. Prediction is based on past memories, but not just one or two memories. Prediction is based on the combinations of memories, because nothing in this world is exactly the same as you read it in a book, or exactly the same as your past experience. The most intelligent people in the world are not the ones who remember the most, but the ones who can relate from one memory to another, and make predictions from it. In business, the market is never stable. An intelligent businessmen won't make an investment based on what happened to the market yesterday. He makes prediction of the market tomorrow, based on the market yesterday, the day before, weeks, month, even years before. He predicts a pattern, does an analysis, and invests according to the pattern.

A good doctor is not a doctor who sit in his room all day reading textbooks. A good doctor is a doctor who routinely meet different patients with the disease, note the similarities and differences between them, detects a pattern, and predicts whether the next patient has the same disease. He predicts the course of the disease, and expects what manegement to be given next if this happens, what management to give if that happens. These predictions can't be found in textbooks. The occurences of disease is different in each and every area. A disease might be common in one place but not another. So a doctor bases his predictions not only by the textbooks he reads, but also from the area and environment of the place he works in.

Do you know the mere difference between reptiles, mammals and humans? Reptiles and other non-mammals don't have a neocortex, the layer of the brain where memories are scattered and stored. So they can't remember, so, intelligence is out of the way. Mammals have neocortex, but covers a relatively smaller area than humans brains. So, they can store memories. However, their neocortex is only 3 layers, in comparisons to humans which have 6 layers of neocortex. This difference, it shows, prevents the ability of mammals to predict. Humans, having 6 layers of neocortex, is blessed with the ability to predict.

That makes us different from animals. Non-mammals don't have memories, you can teach an iguana to use a hammer for a million years and it won't even recognize that you've been its teacher for a million years. Mammals like monkeys have memories. When taught to hammer nails again and again, they will soon learn to hammer nails, but they can't predict. So all they know is that hammer is used to hammer nails. Humans are blessed with the ability to predict. We've seen and known that hammers are used to hammer nails, but we also know that it can be used for other stuffs. Like breaking open things

So basically, without memories, we are iguanas, without the ability to predict we are monkeys, and with both the ability to remember and predict, we are intelligent human beings.

Conclusively, to be intelligent, we need to gain a lot of memories, and smart to associate them into predictions. As the equation goes:

Intelligence = Memory <-> Prediction

So go read and experience a lot of things in the world, but always intelligently associate what you've learned with one thing or another. Prediction, after all is the key to success in life. Successful businessmen predicts the market, successful architects predicts the future buildings, successful fashion designer predicts the future fashion trend, successful engineers predicts the future technology...the lists goes on and on...

My Indonesian Friends

My Indonesian Friends

Just came back from a small farewell dinner with my Indonesian friend, Aji and Lydia. Through our conversations, we were taken back to our HNMUN days, how we missed it, and realized it has been over a year since. Most surprising is that the things we remember the most were the challenges that we faced throughout our journey. Like the suspense when I was left behind on the first flight, our troubles when we got separated and lost after visiting Liberty Island, how me and one of my friend, Hanif got stuck with the subway ticket. Me and Hanif (again) lost our money at New York. I lost it at the ATM , he lost it at the hotel room. How we me and Aji gambled through Washington looking for the hospital he was born in. Me gambling through Boston looking for the place I used to grow up in. How we walked a long way through Chinatown looking for a bus to Washington. There was much we went through; even this blog wouldn’t be enough to fit everything in.

One of the most memorable moments is when we got lost in New York and ran late for a dinner with the Indonesian Ambassador at the consulate. We were from Liberty Island and lined up for the ferry. There were about 15 of us, and we got separated when there’s only 5 space left inside the ferry and the rest of us were left behind. So we had to wait for another ferry which we waited for another 45 minutes! We went easy at first, but then realized we were already late for the dinner! Our Faculty advisors had already arrived at the Consulate and were furious that we are late.

We were already late, and once we got onto the mainland, no taxi were to be found! We walked and walked to find one, but to no avail. So we decided to take the subway. This is when me and Hanif got stuck. Remember the cool American subway in New York you see in movies. Those are not real New York Subways. Those are Hollywood subways. The New York subway we went through was ancient. It’s so old that me and Hanif got stuck at the gate. Our ticket was sucked in, but we cannot pass through. So we went to buy a new ticket, but the machine was busted! It’s bank note slot was busted, so we had to use coins, which we didn’t have, so we had to beg people to for a change of coins with our bank notes. So we passed, got onto the subway, on our way to the consulate. We ran all the way to 58th street from the subway, where the Consulate was supposed to be, but when we arrived there, no Indonesian consulate can be seen. We asked around, and nobody knew anything about an Indonesian consulate. We were puzzled and checked the message our Faculty Advisors sent to one of my friends again. It reads 68th street. 68th? we were on the 58th, that’s 10 blocks away! We were so in a rush, that we misread it! We were lucky that there were many taxi on the 58th, so we took it straight to the consulate.

When we arrived, we can see our faculty advisor’s face all red. We’re an hour late! He’s furious. But we were in the consulate, and there were VIPs, people from other Universities, and all, so we decided to play cool. But it was very awkward because everybody else was wearing blazers, batik and tuxedoes, and we were in our jackets and jeans! We were supposed to change first but because we were running late, we decided to just go straight to the event. But the best thing I remembered is that we all played it cool, and introduced ourselves to the embassy people. They were delighted we finally made it.

At the end of the dinner, there was a band playing. They play classic Frank Sinatra kinda songs. Then, they asked if any of us wanted to sing. Me and Aji has the same passion for classic songs, and one of our favorite is Frank Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me to The Moon’. We were tensed before, running all over New York, and we knew later we’d have a scolding session by our Faculty Advisor. So, why not gamble singing a song in front of everybody?

And so we did, we asked them to play ‘Fly Me to The Moon’, and we both sang together. To our surprise, the head of Indonesian consulate stood up, took his wife’s hand, and started dancing! Then, the other’s followed. Before I know it, everybody was up and dancing. It was one of the joyous night of my life! Not just that I’m not used to sing in public, but now I’m singing in an Indonesian Consulate with a whole lot of people. On our way back to our hostel, I sang Frank Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York’ all the way. Fitting isn’t it? Singing ‘New York, New York’ in New York, passing through the city lights, the glittery Times Square which never sleeps. The city that never sleeps as they say. It was beautiful indeed. Then, when we arrived, as we expected, we had a ‘scolding session’ with our faculty advisors. But we settled it okay, and were like best friends again the next day. I will always remember that night in New York

Friendships are built through the hardships we went together. Once a friendship is born, it knows no boundaries. I don’t care whatever tensions that happened or will happen between the Malaysian and Indonesian governments, I love my Indonesian friends. We went through a lot together. When I am with them, never once I felt as an outsider. Even as the only Malaysian in the team. Being together for a year, practicing every Saturday, at cozy café’s that I love, and finally getting to the US, and safely back again. It was the best moments I had here in Indonesia.

I couldn’t believe I will be leaving very soon. 3 years has gone by, and I will be leaving my Indonesian friends for good. Who knows when we’ll meet again. Whenever that will be, I’m sure all of them will be successful people in the future. Perhaps we’ll meet again in the US, me attending an international conference, and they were there too. Only, that time we’ll be real the delegates, representing our country for real. Who knows?

Our Brains Are Made of Plastic?

Perhaps the greatest discovery of the last decade is that our brains are plastic. Neurologists call it ‘the phenomenon of brain plasticity’. Yes, our brains are made of plastic! Okay, of course not, but brain plasticity is the ability of our brains to change in response to learning and acquiring new skills and experience. So our brains are not actually a complicated super computer, but a complicated…brain! There’s nothing in the world closer to it. Unlike computer hardware which does what it does, stores memory and stuff, when a task given is overwhelming or over its maximum hardware capacity, we need to get a new hardware, or a new computer. Our brains, on the other hand, responds to the overwhelming challenge and grows accordingly.

Did you know that the brain of life-time video gamers is 13% larger than the average population?

Yes! They are larger, but…they are EMPTY. Okay, not good example. That was supposed to make you laugh. Anyway, here’s another:

Did you know that the brains of London Taxi drivers are 15% larger than London Bus drivers?

Yes, they are larger, especially at the brain area called the ‘hippocampus' where the awareness of space is processed. Scientists believe this is so because they spend much more time each day thinking of the best route to go by, compared to the bus drivers who follow a set of routine routes every day. This process of thinking and memorizing routes and places causes the brain to grow.

It has long been known that Einstein’s brain is larger than most of us, but the greatest mistake scientists of the past made is to postulate that he was born with it. Only recently, with the discovery of neuroplasticity, we know Einstein grew his brain throughout his lifetime of study and experience.

This ability of the brain to grow is remarkable, especially in the field of education and medicine. In medicine, it gives hope to those who acquired disabilities after a stroke attack. Stroke, which causes the death of a patch of brain cells, can cause paralysis of a part of the body. It has long been thought that it is permanent. But in a new rehabilitation technique, the patient's normally functioning limb is tied up (so it can’t be used). After awhile, the patient slowly gains control over the other limb which once thought to be permanently paralyzed. This hasn’t been discovered until recently because of the prior doctrine that brain cells can’t grow and most patients give up even before trying because:

1. They become comfortable with their existing functioning limb
2. It takes a LOT of effort to move the bad limb
3. It takes a LONG time before we can see improvements

Perhaps the most amazing case is with the child patient known as ‘Jodi’ who underwent a ‘hemispherectomy’ at The John Hopkins Hospital in the US as a last-resort treatment for her seizure. HALF of her brain was removed. Common logic is that she would lose HALF of her brain function, paralyzed at one side, and is unable to speak. The neurosurgeon that did the operation, Dr. Benjamin Carson, also had thought of it and warned the parents of the complications. However, an amazing thing happened. She begins to speak again after a few days, and began walking after a few weeks…with half of her brain! Today, she scores straight A’s in her exams and living a relatively normal life. On brain scans, it was found out that all the functions on the part of her brain that has been removed is now transferred to the existing part of the brain, and that part of the brain grows. Isn’t that amazing? If a child with half of her brain can grow and learn normally, how about us with fully functioning brains?

Taking paralysis and the ‘bad limb’ as a metaphor, here’s what preventing us from growing our brains:

1. We become comfortable with our existing knowledge and experience
2. It takes a lot of effort to gain new knowledge
3. It takes a long time to see improvements

Here’s something I found on a lecture about neuroplasticity by Dr Mark Barnes & Janae Adamson. These are the optimum environment for our brain to grow when learning:

1. Attention / Focus – You know you’re focusing on your studies when you lose track of time, or when you don’t checkout Facebook notifications every 30 seconds
2. Intensity – Learning which involve intense emotions are most effective. Like studying the subject you feel deeply about, for example studying heart failures because a loved one suffers from it creates an intense emotion.
3. Timing – It takes a night’s sleep to properly organize what we have learnt. The most important ones are stored in long-term memories during this time
4. Constraint – Like regaining control of a bad limb, we learn more effectively when going the hard way, like without using aide such as calculators, checking the answers at the back every 10 seconds. We need to struggle to grow our brains
5. Visualization – Our unconscious brain can’t really distinguish between a memory of real experience and a vividly imagined situation. So if we visualize a skill (especially clinical skills, OSCE, for medical students), we would actually activate the part of the brain involved in actually doing the real thing
6. Imitation – Watching a person do something activates the observer’s part of the brain involved in doing the same thing. That’s why children dance along when they see adults dancing. As we grow up, our conscious functions in the frontal area of the brain inhibits this

How Our Brain Cells Determine Our Talents

What’s the difference between the brain of the talented and the less?
Why do the world’s top athletes or musicians start young?
What’s the formula of being a Nobel-prize genius?

In one of my articles, ‘The Scientific Difference between Liking & Wanting’, I have mentioned about brain circuits. In this article, I would expand on them. Specifically, how it determines our talent, and how can we use it to improve our skills. Brain circuits consists of a few ‘wires’ we call neurons, which transmits signals from our senses to our brain. From there, the brain processes the information, decides a response and ‘wires’ back the information through another set of circuits to appropriate parts of the body. Like when you are eating hot dogs when you are supposed to be on a diet, and then your friend suddenly comes up to you and say “Hey, why are you eating? Aren’t you on a diet?” The words made its way from your ears to your brain, processes it, decides a response, and sends back signals to your hand, mouth and tongue muscles, throwing away the hot dog and say “Oh no, no, I was just looking through that hot dog. I think it’s really hot…uh…the dog…anyway, why are you here?” Your brain tries to change the topic of hot dog to distract your friend. That’s our brain, it’s smart.

A neuron is like a wire cut off at both ends where at each end will be the shrub of shiny coppers sprouting out from the plastic insulator at the middle. In neurons, these ends are called dendrites on one end, and synaptic knobs on the other. In between those is the long part of the wire we call axon. Most neuron don’t have axons long enough to make it all the way to the brain. So the synaptic knobs connect to the dendrites of another neuron by small divisions called synapse (like soldering ends of wires to make it longer) until it reaches the brain. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer a neuron as a ‘wire’, and synapses as ‘wire connector’.

Unlike fishes or worms, most of our wires can’t be grown again after childhood. Logically, the more wires we have, the faster, the more accurate we respond, right? However, the good news is, we can always add more ‘wire connectors’. We don’t really have to grow new wires. These wires form basic function, like lifting your hand, or tilting your head (even a baby can do that). Scientists believe that even if we have the brain of a fish, we can still button our shirts! But that’s as long as we add wire connectors. Fishes don’t have much wire connectors like in humans, hence they don't wear shirts. Adding more wire connectors will strengthen the connection. In science we call this ‘synaptic plasticity’, the strengthening of synaptic connections. A strengthened connection allows you to respond faster, more accurate, and with less effort.

Now here is how wire connectors work:

1. The more we use the wire, the more wire connectors are built
2. The more wire connectors there are, the stronger the wire connections
3. The stronger the wire connections, the faster and more precise the connection signals
4. The faster and precise the connection signals, the less aware you are that you are using them

Remember, wires are just parts of a circuit. So when a circuit is used, not only one, but a few bunch of wires gets stronger. The last two points are the most profound. It holds the key to our talents, to being an Olympic athlete, a world-class musician, or a Nobel-prize winner. Now let’s go back to the questions:

What’s the difference between the brain of the talented and the less?
Why do the world’s top athletes or musicians start young?
What’s the formula of being a Nobel-prize genius?

To answer these questions we’ll need real-life proof. Let us start with Tiger Woods. Taking scandals aside, Tiger Woods is no doubt the world’s greatest golfer. However, he didn’t turn into a world champion overnight. He became a champion after decades of brain wire strengthening. There is no doubt that he started playing golf when he was very young, but how young? It was accounted that at the age of 5 months, Tiger started watching his dad play golf on a baby chair. By 9 months, his father made him a sawed-off golf club which he could handle. By 1 year old, he started going to golf courses. At 2, he already won Under Age 10 golfing competition. After the age of 11, he surpassed his father’s skill, and was never again beaten by his dad in golf. He won his first national junior tournament at the age of 13. I guess I do not need to keep on. You get the point from here. The question is not ‘what else did he won?’ but ‘what was happening inside his brain?’

Playing golf involve complex movements, requiring precise coordination between the mind and muscles. When I say complex movements, it means that it involves a lot of muscle-brain circuits. For example, the one controlling hand movements, the one maintaining the hip positions and the ones keeping the eyes on the ball. Everything needs to be precisely coordinated. However, as stated before, the more we use these wires, the more connections are built, the stronger, faster and more precise the connections, and hence, the less aware he is that he’s using it. Remember the first time you try to play the guitar, piano or learn dancing? It was a struggle wasn’t it? You need a lot of effort. You need to be so attentive to the movements of your hands, your fingers or your feet. But after hours and hours of practicing it feels less of an effort, until you reach a stage where you can play a song or dance and talk to your friend at the same time. That’s because the wire connectors inside your brain have become strong enough that you start doing the movements automatically. We call this 'automaticity'. Once you have reached automaticity, you don’t need to pay enormous amount of attention on what your muscles do. Hence, allowing you to play music or dance while paying attention to other things, like talking to your friend. That is exactly what happened to Tiger Woods.

Since 5 months old, Tiger has started strengthening his connections, at the age of 13, he already perfected his craft, with connections as solid as steel. By that time, the complex movements of hitting the golf ball ceases to be an enormous effort. It’s already automatic, and when that is combined with focused attention, he starts shooting like a machine. Tiger keeps on winning because he has an advantage over others: he has strong wire connectors since young, and all he has to do is keep on practicing to keep ahead of others. There are many other world-class athletes that start young. Roger Federer starts playing tennis at six. Lionel Messi started playing soccer at five. This is not limited to sports. Mozart started composing his first piece at 4. Jimi Hendrix started playing the guitar at 10. Each and everyone of them started stimulating their wires at a young age, and day by day strengthening them to perfection so that when they reach adulthood, they’re already the master of their art.

Now do not be disappointed when I said that most of them start young, thinking that it is too late for you. The essence of what I have explained earlier is not actually starting young, but spending a whole lot of time honing your craft more than anyone else. For example, before the rise of The Beatles, there were many other bands that started playing young. However, The Beatles went the extra mile by playing for 8 hours a day even before their first hit single, strengthening their ‘music wire connectors’ each and every minute they play. Soon, they surpassed the abilities other bands which mostly played 3 to 4 hours a day. Pablo Picasso once did a painting in 2 minutes and sold it worth millions of dollars. When asked how he created the masterpiece in just 2 seconds, he answered: “It took me 20 years of practice to do that painting in 2 seconds’. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the founders of Sun Microsystems were given access computer at a time when computer access is limited to others, allowing them to strengthen their wire connections long before others. Today, they are the big players in the computer industry.

Hence, it is apparent in that world-class achievers either start young or spent countless hours on the things they’re focused to. ‘Focused’ means that they aim to be the master of one, instead of being the jack of all. Tiger Woods never changed his focus to tennis. Federer never tried to be a musician. Bill Gates never wanted to join the bands. They are all focused on the things they like and good at. They focused on it like crazy, strengthening their wire connectors related to their craft. As what Robin Sharma, the author of the bestselling book ‘The Monk Who Sold his Ferarri’ once wrote:

Daily improvement + focus = genius

It means find something that you like and focus on it, improving it each and every day. It doesn't have to be golf, tennis, or music. It could be literature, business, science or even Lego-building. You can become a genius in any field you want by applying the formula. So, what kind of genius you want to be in the future? Start practicing today. Nothing is too late. If you practice and improve every day, no matter how little, in 5 to 10 years from now, you will become a world-class achiever. When that day comes, I'd be happy to hear from you