Neuroscience and Emotional Intelligence: The Seat of the Normal

I am the first to admit that up till now I have considered the emphasis placed by Emotional Intelligence experts on the link to neuroscience to be exaggerated.  I wrote a blog about it in June 2013 “Emotional intelligence is a huge part of leadership, but how should we measure it?” Also late last year in November 2014 I wrote a blog “Emotional Intelligence Myth#1: The Amygdala Hijack.”

However a recent article “The Trip Treatment” in the 9 February 2015 edition of The New Yorker, has caused me to modify my position.  The article is about the recent rise of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of illnesses such as cancer, mainly as palliative measures. What really interested me was work being done by Robin Cathart-Harris in London where he and his team have been injecting volunteers with psilocybin and LSD and then using a variety of scanning tools to observe what happens in their brain.

It turns out the psychedelic drugs did not work by exciting the brain.  In fact it was the complete opposite!! In 2001 a paper by Marcus Raichle first described the “default-mode” network.  The default-mode network comprises a centrally located hub of brain activity the links parts of the cerebral network to older parts of the brain such as the limbic system and hippocampus.  The default-mode network has been described by Cathart-Harris as the “brain’s orchestra conductor”.  It lights up when we are day dreaming or engaged in higher-level “meta-cognitive” processes as self-reflection, memory time travel, or thinking about other people’s thinking.  It has an inhibitory effect of lower level parts of the brain that deal with emotion. 

What happens that when a volunteer takes a psychedelic drug the brain scans show the default-mode network shutting down and according to the volunteer it feel like their ego is dissolving.  A similar result has been demonstrated when the brain scans of experienced meditator are compared to those of novices.  Experienced meditators can suspend the working of the default-mode network and this allows other brain regions to be let off the leash and so generate a mystical experience.  Regions of the brain that do not normally talk to each other do so engaging in what is known as “cross-talk” which then can lead to mind blowing effects such as vivid hallucinations.

To a Humm-Wadsworth practitioner the default-mode network is neuro-physical counterpart of The Normal Component.  In the original 1934 paper Humm and Wadsworth defined the Normal as primarily a control mechanism providing rational balance and temperamental equilibrium.  It is essentially a brake which causes restraint and persons with a very high Normal will become indiscriminate conservatives. 

While I consider the other six Humm components to be genetically based, I am now ready to concede that the neuroscience has discovered the seat of the Normal.