Introduction
This series has gone into the development and integration of what is called the social brain, from the point of view of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB).
Part 1 set out why the integration of brain, body and environment matters, and introduced the framework as a whole.
Part 2 worked through the difference in processing speed — the fast brain (amygdala, brainstem) and the slow brain (prefrontal cortex) — toward an integrated understanding of emotional response and cognitive control.
Part 3 took up attachment styles and the nine functions of the middle prefrontal cortex, and showed how mindfulness grows all of them together.
Part 4 looked at the relation between polyvagal theory and the amygdala, and at why neural safety matters.
Part 5 turned to the circuitry of empathy and the sense of self, through mirror neurons, the insula and the middle prefrontal cortex.
Part 6 followed the developmental order of the brain — bottom-up, right-to-left — and set out how attachment and empathy come to be formed.
How the Social Brain Matures — From Regulation to Empathy, and On to Creation
Our brains develop, and come to be integrated, within relationship with others.
It begins with response at the level of bodily sensation — comfort and discomfort (brain stem); moves to relational regulation through affect and memory (limbic system); and arrives at understanding another’s feeling and situation, and growing empathy (prefrontal cortex). This movement is what maturity in the social brain amounts to: from the regulation of feeling to empathy.
Behind this developmental process lies the forming of relationship on the inside — internalization.
Object Relations Theory — The Template for Inner Relationship
Object Relations Theory developed within psychoanalysis, and asks how relationship with others in early childhood — with the mother or principal caregiver above all — gets inscribed in our inner world and shapes the person we become.
On this theory, a relational pair made of three elements — self, object, and the feeling that arises between them — is internalized through repeated experience, and becomes the pattern of our relationships with others.
For instance:
- [Secure] A relationship with a loving, attuned mother (other) → a self worth loving (self) → feelings of ease and of being filled (feelings)
- [Avoidant] A relationship with a mother who ignores or rejects (other) → a self without worth, cut off (self) → anxiety, anger, isolation (feelings)
- [Anxious] A relationship with a mother who is unpredictable and changeable (other) → a self that wants to be loved but is uneasy (self) → tension, clinging, fear of being left (feelings)
Inner patterns formed this way are held, for the most part, as implicit memory, and bear on adult relationships without our noticing.
The Core of the Social Brain — Middle Prefrontal Cortex and Insula
What matters here are the middle prefrontal cortex and the insula.
The middle prefrontal cortex carries the following nine integrative functions, and works as the centre of the social brain:
- Body Regulation
- Emotional Balance
- Response Flexibility
- Fear Modulation
- Empathy
- Insight
- Morality
- Intuition
- Attuned Communication
That these are grown through the practice of mindfulness has scientific support (Siegel, 2007).
The insula, meanwhile, carries the following, and is indispensable to the generating of a sense of self:
- Interoception
- Embodied self-awareness
- Subjective emotional experience
- Social feeling (empathy, care, kindness)
- Motor control and processing
- Regulation of homeostasis
As the insula and the middle prefrontal cortex work together, the body that feels and the brain that makes meaning come together, and we become able to build relationship with others while feeling ourselves as agents in our own right.
Rolfing and the Social Brain — Approaching from the Body
Rolfing is a practice that deepens the sense of ease, integration and connection through a structural reorganisation of the body.
When, over a series of sessions, breathing deepens, standing comes into line with gravity, and the boundary of the body becomes something one can feel, this is exactly the result of brain stem, limbic system and prefrontal cortex being integrated in their hierarchy — and it runs parallel to the maturing of the social brain.
Finding it hard to meet someone’s eyes; reacting before one has thought; being unable to connect with people at ease — behind such experience there is often a nervous system that has not been integrated.
Rolfing can serve as a means of supporting that integration, by way of the body, which is the quickest route in.
What IPNB Has to Teach — The Science of Integration and Change
Interpersonal Neurobiology, the subject of these seven pieces, is a strong integrative theory joining current neuroscience to classical psychology.
What it comes to might be put this way:
- The brain is shaped by relationship with others.
- Feeling, memory, cognition and bodily sensation are not separate from one another.
- Mindful relationship is what encourages the brain’s reorganisation and integration.
- Regulation and co-regulation are the common ground of therapy, education and leadership alike.
Understanding IPNB, in other words, is less a matter of knowledge than of practice.
A scientific ground for knowing oneself, for raising the capacity to connect with others, and for choosing a freer and more creative life — that is the largest thing IPNB offers.
I hope this series has been of some use in your own practice, and in your own inquiry into relationship.
References
- Dan Siegel, The Developing Mind, Mindsight, The Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology
- Allan Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self
- Louis Cozolino, The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy
- Stephen Porges (polyvagal theory)
- Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made
- Bowlby / Ainsworth / Mary Main (attachment theory)