Читать книгу The New IQ: Use Your Working Memory to Think Stronger, Smarter, Faster - Tracy Alloway - Страница 52

One afternoon Ann, a corporate lawyer who had recently made partner, discovered a large bump in her lower back. She immediately started worrying that it was a cancerous tumor, but since she was so overwhelmed with her new job responsibilities, she avoided going to the doctor and tried to put the situation out of her mind. But the more she tried to suppress the thought, the more she kept going over catastrophic possibilities in her mind. Within a few weeks, she was very depressed. She had trouble focusing on work, got distracted in meetings, made faulty judgments on cases, and started to forget to return phone calls to her clients. In short, her working memory was impaired.

Some fascinating research suggests that failing to address our problems undermines our working memory. One such study conducted by scientists at Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Texas researched the fight-or-flight mechanism in mice and found that mice who ran away from a variety of challenging situations (such as interacting with bigger, more aggressive mice) suffered weight loss, lower sex drive, and insomnia, and they had a change in levels of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Previous research has shown that low levels of BDNF are associated with both a compromised working memory and depression, but the exact nature of this complex relationship has yet to be determined.

The mice who interacted with the larger mice had regular sleep, a healthy sex life, normal eating, and no change in their BDNF levels. The authors suggest that the discovery has an important implication: dealing with your problems enhances resiliency. They draw on Rachel Yehuda’s research on working memory and stress, which we discussed in Chapter 2, to highlight how resiliency is evident after exposure to stressful situations and resilient people show optimism in the face of adversity. So let’s return for a moment to Ann, who was busy at work and put off dealing with her problem. As a result, her working memory—and her work—was adversely affected by the stress. When Ann’s best friend pleaded with her to get over her fear of going to the doctor and get the bump checked out, she finally decided to listen to her. The doctor took a biopsy, and it turned out that the bump was not malignant. The bottom line is if you avoid dealing with your problems, it can diminish your working memory and make you more susceptible to depression. This can have a knock-on effect, because a poor working memory also undermines your ability to deal appropriately with the fallout that comes from avoiding problems in the first place. By dealing with your problems head on, you at least have the benefit of a fully functioning working memory so you can adapt to whatever comes your way.