What, is it May already? Hibernation is one thing, but disappearing from here for close on two years is something else entirely! But I am pertinently awake now to post about alertness.
The stimulus for this post comes from our government’s exhortation for us to “Stay Alert!” as we precariously enter the next phase of the battle against Covid-19. I thought I would share a little bit of psychological knowledge about alertness.
In essence, we are talking more broadly about our level of consciousness or arousal. I see alertness as being towards the upper end of a spectrum ranging from drowsiness to hyperarousal. This spectrum accounts only for our waking states – we can extend it further to include sleep stages and coma.
The magic begins in the mesopons (part of our brain stem), the origin of the Ascending Reticular Activating System. This is not easy to put on a t-shirt, so ARAS will suffice. The ARAS is literally a network of neural pathways (reticular comes from the Latin word for “net”) that project throughout our brains, including the areas responsible for our emotions, the pleasure centres (unfortunately closed due to social distancing) and the neocortex. The pathways are schematically shown in the following diagram.
The pathways are served by a number of different neurotransmitters (the chemicals that carry signals between nerve cells, either switching them on or off) such as noradrenaline, acetycholine, gamma amino butyric acid (another t-shirt job – go for GABA), serotonin, glutamate, and dopamine. These all interact in complex ways to control (among other functions) our sleep-wake cycles and the extent to which we are alert – switched-on to the world around us.
We talk about excitatory and inhibitory pathways – the former increase neural activity and the latter dampen activity (in broad terms). There is a delicate dance between these systems and anything that affects one system will produce effects in other systems. Drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine are known as stimulants because they lead to increased arousal and excitability – the downside (literally) is that once the effects wear off, there is a compensatory dampening of arousal. Drugs such as barbiturates, opioids and alcohol are known as depressants – they reduce arousal levels, make you less responsive to the world around you – and withdrawal from these can lead to compensatory excitation (restlessness, agitation, inability to sleep and, in extreme cases, even seizures). So much for the basic principles of alertness. It all comes from the ARAS.
Now, some particular points to consider. The diagram shows the amygdala. This is an almond shaped body (hey, guess what? – the name comes from the Greek word for almond! How nutty is that?!) that plays a very important role in how we perceive and process our emotions. We can see it as the conductor of a very large orchestra, bringing everything together.
The amygdala comes into its own when we look at anxiety and fear. We can conceptualise it as an early warning system or emotional smoke alarm. [A conductor and an early warning system? How alarming is that? Apologies for the mixed metaphors].
It works silently in the background, scanning the environment for any threats. If a threat is detected, it can set in motion the body’s survival response, as illustrated below in slides I prepared earlier (with expert design input from Ilse Lee).
However, sometimes the amygdala can be oversensitive. This can occur when you are feeling stressed or if you have experienced a traumatic event. At these times, it detects threats when there are no threats present (this is often the case for people who suffer from anxiety disorders), setting off the alarm and activating the body’s defenses in much the same way as a smoke detector is activated by something other than smoke. We are of course talking about false alarms. We could say it is better to be safe than sorry, but it comes at a cost – excess energy expenditure and disruption of our normal daily functioning.
To recap – we have the ARAS and the important role played by the amygdala. We have the body’s automatic responses to threats and other emotional stimuli (see my PDF on emotions for more information about these processes).
Now I want to consider the role of our voluntary responses to emotional situations, especially anxiety. This is where our neocortex comes into play, especially the area known as the pre-frontal cortex (labelled PFC in the first diagram in the post). The PFC plays a key role in controlling our behaviour. It helps with planning, choice and decision-making. It stops us from acting spontaneously and instinctively – it inhibits our natural inclinations. Unsurprisingly, alcohol and other drugs can disrupt this activity, which is why we might end up doing things we later regret. We can see this as the prosocial part of our brain (the bits which help us live in communities and have regard and responsibility for our actions). It is in a constant dance with our more primitive brain (which is more focused on pleasure-seeking and survival) to moderate our responses to threats and danger. Obviously, at times of imminent danger, the choice is taken away from us and the fight/flight/freeze systems are activated in what our primitive brain “judges” (there is no conscious processing – it is beyond our awareness) to be in our best interest.
What can we learn from this understanding of arousal and threat?
1. Tiredness, fatigue, alcohol and other drugs can reduce our capacity to be alert.
2. Remaining alert uses a lot of energy – so we have to attend to our nutrition and hydration.
3. We need to know what kind of threat signals we are scanning for – e.g., people coming too close to us, people coughing and sneezing. The virus is not carrying a banner.
4. The sheer complexity of the neural pathways involved may increase the risk of errors. There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip. While we are at the mercy of our primitive brain, we have to do all we can to engage our prosocial brain. When this goes wrong, we are extra fearful of strangers, we become hostile to people, or our inhibitory systems break down and we disregard the rules without a thought for our own or others’ wellbeing.
We can do our best to “Stay Alert”, but our brains may have other ideas or priorities. The amygdala will do what it will – and given the overall levels of stress and uncertainty at present, it is probably already in a more sensitive state.
Keep safe and well. Keep alert.
The Frothy Filosofer 