Tpn Quotes

She’s reckless and unreasonable. She’s naive and immature. But… she is amazingly true to herself.

I want to save them. Emma and the others, Cislo, Barbara and everyone else. In order to do so... I will gladly become a God or a Devil... Emma.

In our brain there is a sophisticated dual-mechanism - formed by networks of neurons - that helps us to protect ourselves from excessive attention and information. We have two distinct modes of attention: the task-positive network (TPN) and the task-negative network (TNN). When one is on, the other is off. TPN is a network in the brain responsible for concentration, that is activated when we are engaged in activities that require attention without distraction. The network is activated when our brain is highly engaged in a task. TNN is active during involuntary actions or when we daydream and our thoughts roam freely.

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In a neurotypical brain, when the TPN is turned on and you’re on task, the DMN is turned off. But in the ADHD brain, the fMRI shows that when the TPN is turned on, the DMN is turned on as well, trying to muscle its way in and pull you into its grasp, thereby distracting you. In ADHD, therefore, the DMN competes with the TPN, which in most people it does not do.

If there is one takeaway in distilling down the complexity of the DMN and the TPN, it boils down to the fact that the toggle switches between them are off in those with ADHD.

In other words: Spend more time in the TPN focusing on a single task. We know what you might be thinking: The whole point is that I can’t focus on a single task! But you can—you are already a master of distraction, so now distract yourself. Productivity isn’t the point here. Moving the toggle switch is.

That I-me-mine self is constructed largely in and by the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex. It’s assisted by the medial temporal lobe, the parietal lobe, and the PCC of which we’ll hear more in Chapter 3. This brain network allows us to do things that other animals cannot. We can compose music and calculate math. We have a sense of time that includes past and future, allowing us to delay gratification to meet our goals. We are able to contemplate the very nature of consciousness, using the brain to think about our thoughts. Yet consciousness is always turned on. Whether we’re focusing on a task using the TPN or listening to the rambling of the demon, the engine is running at 2,000 RPM. There’s no easy way of shutting off our thoughts, of getting outside the self. In his book The Curse of Self, psychologist Mark Leary of Duke University shows the many downsides of this perpetual self-awareness. He shows that it leads to many forms of suffering, including “depression, anxiety, anger, jealousy, and other negative emotions.” He concludes that self-awareness is “single-handedly responsible for many, if not most of the problems that human beings face as individuals and as a species.” We can summarize this state in a single word: “selfing.” Meditation quiets self-awareness and gives us relief from selfing. In experienced meditators, the “self” parts of the prefrontal cortex go offline. The jargon for this is “hypofrontality.” Hypo is the opposite of hyper, and hypofrontality means the shutting down of the brain’s frontal lobes. The inner critic shuts up. The negative self-talk about “who I am” and “what I do” and “what other people think of me” ceases. We quit selfing. This gives us a sense of identity beyond the suffering self and all the roles it plays. Psychologist Robert Kegan is the former head of adult psychology at Harvard University. He calls the transcendence of selfing the “subject-object shift.” In altered states, we get out of the subjective selves we normally think we are. To be objective, you can’t be the object you’re contemplating. So when the brain enters a state of hypofrontality and we’re no longer enmeshed in the local self, we gain perspective on it. We realize we’re more than that. To realize it’s an object we’re observing, we have to step out of the suffering self. We see the demon from a distance as we step into an identity that is vastly greater than the one we previously inhabited. 2.8. When we make the subject-object shift we escape the limitations of the finite self. Kegan believes that making this jump is the most powerful way to facilitate personal transformation. He says that after it makes the subject-object shift, “the self is more about movement through different states of consciousness than about defending and identifying with any one form.

The Emory researchers who identified the four phases of meditation found that when meditators slip out of the focused attention of the TPN and into Mind Wandering, the DMN activates. The wandering mind of the DMN has a “me” orientation, focusing on the self. It may flit from what’s going on at the moment (“Is that a mosquito buzzing?”) to future worries (“I’m nervous about next week’s exam”) to the past (“I’m so mad at my brother Jim for calling me a sissy at my fifth birthday party”). The precuneus contributes to both self-referential focus and episodic memory. Disturbing memories are played and replayed. The idle brain defaults to what is bothering us, both recent and long-past events. These egocentric musings of the wandering mind form the fabric of our sense of self. When you quiet your TPN in meditation, you open up a big empty space in consciousness. For a few moments, the brain is quiet, and you feel inner peace. Then the engine starts revving. The DMN kicks in, bringing with it a cascade of worries and random thoughts. You’re doing 2,000 RPM in Park, but going nowhere. And it gets worse. The DMN has a rich neural network connecting it with other brain regions. Through this, it busily starts recruiting other brain regions to go along with its whining self-absorption. It commandeers the brain’s CEO, the prefrontal cortex. This impairs executive functions like memory, attention, flexibility, inhibition, planning, and problem-solving. 2.5. Nerves from the Default Mode Network reach out to communicate with many other parts of the brain. The DMN also recruits the insula, a region that integrates information from other parts of the brain. It has special neurons triggered by emotions that we feel toward other people, such as resentment, embarrassment, lust, and contempt. We don’t just think negative thoughts; we feel them emotionally too. At this stage, the meditator isn’t just wallowing in a whirlwind of self-centered thoughts. The DMN has taken the brain’s CEO hostage, while through the insula it starts replaying all the slights, insults, and disappointments we’ve experienced in our relationships. The quiet meditative space we experienced just a few moments before has been destroyed. This drives meditators absolutely nuts. No sooner do they achieve nirvana, the still, quiet place of Bliss Brain, than the DMN serves up a smorgasbord of self-absorbed fantasies. It pulls us into negative emotional states—then drags the rest of the brain along behind it. The DMN. Hmm . . . that acronym reminds me of something: “the DeMoN.” The DMN is the demon that robs me of the inner peace I’m seeking through meditation

The connectome that lights up when you’re engaged in a task is called the task-positive network, or TPN. Aptly named, the TPN gets you down to work. You’re deliberately doing something and you are intent on it, unaware of much beyond the bounds of what you’re doing. In this state, you don’t consciously know whether you’re happy or not, which is just as good as being happy, if not better, because you’re not wasting any energy in self-assessment. You may become frustrated with what you’re doing and have moments of anger or dismay, but if you stay in the task, in the TPN, those moments will pass, and the TPN, buoyant connectome that it is, will carry you along. When you’re thinking with the TPN, you’re in the Angel mindset. But you can also get trapped in the TPN, doing a task from which you cannot disengage. This is the hyperfocused state that people with ADHD can fall into. Far from being helpful, it can keep you stuck in one task, unable to shut down the screen, turn off the TV, or move from one paragraph to the next. This is the often unrecognized downside of focus.

Focus on anything external to yourself. Activating the TPN will shut down the DMN.