Introduction
This series of seven pieces takes up what is called the social brain, and looks at how we connect with one another from several sides at once: neuroscience, attachment theory, developmental psychology, bodily sensation.
The frame running through it is Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), an integrative approach developed by Dr Dan Siegel and others.
In this first piece I want to describe what kind of framework IPNB is, and set out a map of what the remaining six will cover.
What Is Interpersonal Neurobiology?
IPNB is a framework proposed by Dr Dan Siegel from the 1990s onward. It cuts across psychology, neuroscience, developmental theory, attachment research and education, and asks a single question: how does being in relationship with others change the brain?
Among the work it draws on: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth on attachment; Allan Schore’s neuroscience of right-brain development and affect regulation; Louis Cozolino on the neural basis of psychotherapy; and Siegel’s own clinical experience. What IPNB attempts is to find the patterns that appear in common across these independent fields.
So IPNB is not itself producing new experimental results. It is a proposal about how existing findings might be arranged so that human experience comes into view.
The Triangle of Well-Being
IPNB sets out three elements to be held together, in what is called the Triangle of Well-Being.
- Brain: neural structure and physiological function (prefrontal cortex, limbic system, vagal system, and so on)
- Mind: subjective experience, emotion, memory, intention, consciousness — the inner processes
- Relationship: interaction with others, attunement, attachment, empathy — the social ties
The three act on one another, so that a change in any one of them reaches the others. Siegel puts his definition of mind this way.
The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.
Which is to say that mind does not sit only inside the skull. It is a dynamic process brought into being by the body and by relationship with others.
This definition differs from the standard one. The general understanding in neuroscience is that mind is an outcome of brain activity, and Siegel’s definition is contested. I take the framework up all the same, because when your work involves putting hands on people, a good deal of what is described here turns out to match what you can feel happening.
Integration, the Central Concept
At the centre of IPNB is integration. It names a state in which different elements — emotion, memory, sensation, relationships, regions of the brain — work together while remaining distinct from one another. Siegel gives the qualities of an integrated mind as an acronym.
- Flexibility
- Adaptability
- Coherence
- Energy
- Stability
Such a state is held to go with mental health, creativity and maturity in relationships. Where integration fails, what appears instead is rigidity or chaos.
The point worth holding onto is that integration does not mean making everything the same. It names a state of being connected while the differences remain. The same thing happens when working with a body in Rolfing. The aim is not to release every muscle evenly, but for each to keep its own part while the whole comes into coordination.
The Social Brain — The Circuitry for Connection
The human brain has circuitry for connecting with others and feeling with them. The main regions are worth naming here.
- Amygdala: judges safety and danger immediately, and governs the stress response
- Hippocampus: orders experience and context, and holds the continuity of memory
- Middle prefrontal cortex (mPFC): integrates empathy, self-awareness, moral judgement and much else
- Insula: generates a sense of self through interoception, the sensing of the body’s interior
- Mirror neurons: reproduce another person’s experience internally, and so support empathy
These regions come up again and again over the series. The subject is not what each does on its own, but how they work together.
What the Seven Pieces Cover
Here is the map.
- Part 1: What is the social brain — the IPNB framework, the Triangle of Well-Being, and integration (this piece)
- Part 2: The fast brain and the slow brain — immediate response through the amygdala and brainstem, and meaning-making through the prefrontal cortex. Also how this differs from Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2
- Part 3: Right-brain development and attachment — how co-regulation between infant and caregiver lays the ground for later capacity to regulate emotion. Allan Schore’s research, and the nine functions of the middle prefrontal cortex
- Part 4: The amygdala and emotional learning — how safety and threat get judged. Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory, and implicit memory held in the body
- Part 5: The resonating brain — mirror neurons and the insula. Empathy considered in three layers: affective, cognitive, and compassionate
- Part 6: The brain grows bottom-up and right-to-left — the developmental order from brainstem to limbic system to cortex, and how it overlaps with the way Rolfing builds from the feet upward
- Part 7: From regulation to empathy — object relations theory and the internal template for relationship. A summary of the series
Each piece ends by looking at the material from the point of view of Rolfing. When your work involves putting hands on people, what is covered here overlaps a great deal with what actually happens in a session.
Next Time: The Slow Circuits and the Fast Ones
Part 2 takes up implicit and explicit memory, and looks at how the fast brain, led by the amygdala, and the slow brain, working through the hippocampus, bear on relationships and on how behaviour changes.
I want to look at the mechanisms behind that from the clinical, neuroscientific and developmental sides.