Times of Social Unrest Appear to Boost Our Brain’s Neuroplasticity
New research suggests that times of global unrest present a unique opportunity for neurological growth and profound behavior change, but only when leveraged correctly.
Kayla Osterhoff is a neuropsychophysiologist who studies the interaction of the mind and brain, which she calls the ‘human operating system.’
“One of the greatest mysteries in modern neuroscience is actually how the brain produces the mind. The reason why we have not been able to come up with the answer for this is because that’s not how it works. These two are actually separate systems that interact together to produce what I call the ‘human operating system,’ which is responsible for our version of reality as humans,” Osterhoff said.
Osterhoff has recently been researching the hypothesis that times of social unrest provide a valuable opportunity to neurologically upgrade this human operating system.
“Right now, we have this very unique opportunity to upgrade our ‘human operating system’ globally,” Osterhoff said. “And that is because as a society around the entire world we are experiencing this social unrest and this has caused a couple of significant cognitive and neurological shifts that have provided an opportunity for us to grow and evolve as a society.”
Osterhoff points to several fascinating factors that contribute to this phenomenon.
“So, studies are showing that acute states of stress, like shock, trauma, or something surprising like what we’re currently experiencing in our world, caused this cognitive psychological shift that actually makes our subconscious mind more suggestible, meaning that our subconscious mind is brought forward so to speak, and it’s more malleable, it’s more programmable,” Osterhoff said.
“If you look back at clinical hypnosis research and Ericksonian research — he was kind of the father of clinical hypnosis — he found in his research that shock and surprise are actually a form of hypnotic induction that can be utilized to reprogram the subconscious mind or increase subconscious suggestibility,” she said.
Another contributing factor Osterhoff has uncovered has to do with the phenomenon of neuroplasticity.
“So, neuroplasticity refers to the way that our neurons, our brain cells, fire, and wire together. So, neuroplasticity increases our ability to change and reshape these neural pathways,” Osterhoff said. “The second opportunity that we have right now is a global increase in neuroplasticity. Now, in these times of unrest, our lives have been upended, our patterns have shifted, and we’re experiencing things for the first time. So, because of this our globe is experiencing heightened neuroplasticity and heightened subconscious suggestibility.”
What are the implications of these findings?
“Now, the opportunity here is that we can leverage these two abilities to change, grow, evolve, shift, and learn to our benefit or if we remain unaware of this, we can be shifted in a way that is detrimental to us as well,” Osterhoff said.
“For instance, if you want to quit smoking, or you want to change some kind of behavior, you have a greater ability to do that right now than ever before. On the opposite side of things, if you spend this time in fear or in worry, you risk hardwiring those behaviors into your physiology. Because this is happening on a mass scale, our world has a greater capacity to evolve, shift, and grow than it ever has before. So we need to leverage this, we need to take advantage so that we can make the positive changes that we want to see in the world happen.”
Scientists Find the Mind Has Power to Manipulate Matter
A groundbreaking new experiment shows the power of the mind to influence matter.
The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), founded in 1973 by astronaut Edgar Mitchell, has for decades been at the forefront of scientific research into psychic phenomena and the nature of consciousness. Much of their study has been around psychophysical phenomena or the ways in which our mind or consciousness affects the physical world of matter. In a new experiment, scientists added a novel element from the world of quantum physics which may prove to be quite significant.
Dr. Dean Radin the chief scientist at IONS and the head of the study said, “It has been said that there are strange things associated with quantum mechanics that are very similar to strange things associated with psychic phenomena.”
“The two things in quantum mechanics that are often called ‘weird’ because they’re strange, involve a property called non-locality, which means that objects even though they’re separated in space, are somehow still connected. This is what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance,’ and it took roughly 60 years for scientists to figure out ways of telling whether or not things really were connected in a non-local way. So, now we not only know that is a fact but there are technologies being used that use this property of non-locality.”
“So that’s one thing, the second thing in quantum mechanics is the notion that the observer simply by observing a system can change its behavior,” he said.
