Emotional short-circuits: the intelligence behind mistakes| Daniela Lucangeli | TEDxMilano

Daniela Lucangeli has a Ph.D. in Development Psychology at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, and teaches at the Department of Medicine, Psychology, and Education at the University of Padua. Today she works as a consultant for the National Observatory on Children, as a researcher on learning difficulties for the scientific committee of the World Academy of Sciences, and she is a member of the scientific committee at the Ministry of Education.

This talk was presented at a TEDx event, which uses the TED conference but has been organized independently by a local community.

For more information, visit http://ted.com/tedx

I have to take a breath,

to talk about emotional short circuits.

I could ask you to come here
and look at yourself,

and the short circuit would start.

I deal with children who can't make it,

children who struggle with school,

children who struggle with growing up,

children who don't feel understood,
children who suffer.

And this has changed my story,
my story as a scientist.

So the other day,
I was in a learning center,

the place where I help these kids,

and in this learning center

one of the girls was looking at me

because I was worried about
how to start today's talk

that in a few minutes
will explain you what we do

and why I'm here.

I looked at her and told her:

"You know, I don't know where to start."

She smiled at me and told me:

"You have to start from the beginning,

you always start from the beginning."

And so, here you can see me

this somehow represents my beginning,

my beginning as a scientist

and of my journey to study
and to understand - but what?

The thing that, on some level,

has fascinated me for so long,

the relationship between
the brain and the mind,

between the brain and the soul.

Between what we feel

and how it is possible
that we feel this way.

And so I spent years and years

fascinated by this astonishing structure:

the brain is an extraordinary structure.

In milliseconds, right now,

you have millions
of billions of connections

that set in motion a transformation

of what you have been
and what you will be.

This transformation is caused
by all the incoming information

that, in some way,

sow something new,

and cause pruning

in what you have been until now,

and create new buds.

This miracle

which measures a mechanism called:

"Zone of Proximal Development".

One of the most
fascinating processes of life:

it is the thing that makes a living being,

that makes who each
one of us, time after time,

chooses to be.

So, after studying hard all these systems,

I came back to Italy.

And what happened to me?

I met a child,

I met him in the green hall
of an hospital,

the walls were truly terrible,

they gave the idea of something

that did not cure but oppress.

This child had eight adults with him,

besides his parents, various assistants,

various teachers, the hospital personnel.

The nurse told him that I was the boss.

What I did

was a gesture from afar,
from the end of the corridor:

I lowered down and I smiled.

This gesture made he ran to me,

he took me by the gown

and told me that word
that you all can read: "help me".

Now, I don't know
what happened to this kid,

but what I do know

is that he changed the trajectory
of my history as a scientist

because I thought

that if everything we knew
couldn't help a child,

and if a whole community,
that was giving him eight adults,

was not helping him
because he was asking for help

to a stranger in a lab coat,
in a green hospital hallway,

this whole system was not helping.

And so I went back to studying.

I went back to study
what in terms of science,

and deep science,

is called: "neuroplasticity"

and in educational terms is called:

"Enhancement of the Zone
of Possible Development".

I began to study

how we can exercise the cerebral domains

to cause improvements in language,

in the ability to focus,
to memorize, to pay attention,

improvements in numerical intelligence.

I became good at it.

Good to the point that children changed,

and from a research point of view
I was very successful,

because at the level
of experimental research

what we achieved was what is called:

"Improved Potential of the Individual
Neuropsychological Structure".

If I can give you an example:

the brain buds in milliseconds

the memories we imprint
through the information we receive.

If we want to understand what causes,

for example, life in school to a child,

we just have to do a calculation.

A calculation that I gave
to the Ministry many years ago:

let's multiply milliseconds

by hundredths of a second,
by tenths of a second,

by seconds, by minutes, by hours,

by days, by months, by years
that a child spends in school:

you'll get a number close to infinity.

That number measures

what each of the adults he will meet

determines in his neural connections:

the transformation of his self.

It is an immense power.

And so my son in second grade wrote

that his mother,

when she finished learning
how to be a scientist,

started being a teacher for teachers

because I started explaining to teachers

what was going on

with neuroplasticity and human potential.

And I was sure I had made it.

But it was not like that. Why?

Because some time later,

and we are getting to the topic
I want to talk about today,

I met another child,

a child with whom we achieved
an extraordinary change

in terms of cognitive profile,

because he had recovered
a standard deviation and a half

from what it is generically called
general intelligence quotient.

And this child at some point told me:

"Now that you have taken
the mistakes from me,

will you take away the pain too?"

And I was not prepared
to understand the relationship

between the error of the mind
and the pain in the mind.

And above all I had not reflected

upon what the mechanism of pain was.

But if now I'd ask you, a thousand adults,

to remember your life and your mistakes,

and I don't mean mistakes in school
about reading and writing,

but life's mistakes,

and if I'd ask you: what has left
a deeper track in your story,

the mistakes you have made
or the pain that they caused you?

And what causes a reaction in you?

I think the answer would be unanimous:

it is pain that determines the reaction.

But what does pain do?

I'll explain it in a few minutes,
otherwise they will scold me,

I will ask you some degrees of freedom,

that is, I ask you to do

something that, in some way,
will help us understand immediately.

Give yourself a pinch, a strong one.

I'm asking you: what is this,
pain or suffering?

It's pain.

Because we have millions of alerts

that from the structure we are hitting,

send us neuroelectric information.

Because the brain sends,
through the peripheral nervous system,

this biochemical boiler
that produces energy,

many information and says:
"Beware! It hurts."

Why does it tell us "it hurts"?

Because we must remember

that we should no longer
find ourselves in that situation,

because it will hurt us.

It begins to trace memories, telling us:

"Away from here! It will hurt."

So what are these extraordinary emotions?

Here you can read it:

they are incredible processes
on a neurofunctional level.

I teach my students

about this biochemical boiler
that produces energy

because we sleep
and we produce three Hertz,

we are awake, as in this moment,
and we produce nine Hertz.

But it takes just an emotion,
a drop of any emotion,

like the one I'm feeling right now,

and although I explain these things
even in much more complex contexts,

it's making me far more emotional,

because I have a big goal:
that is, to talk with you.

Eventually I will tell you.

And this emotion is so powerful

that, although my brain
is very well trained,

my voice makes it explicit.

And I can't control the voice

because the emotion is more powerful
than the cognitive system,

it is the great decision maker.

And it's a smart decision maker
but it has only two answers,

which are: "it hurts"
or "it's good for me".

"It hurts" or "it's good for me".

Emotions exist in our evolutionary system

to tell us: "run away" if it hurts,
"keep it and look for more" if it's good.

And how does it tell us so?

It tells us this through
an incredible hertzian mechanism.

If we have a moment of joy,
we have a hertzian peak

in which the wave that takes place
is a wave with a very high intensity

but very very short.

Why are high intensity waves that short?

Because the memory of joy must be traced;

but since joy is good,

as everything that makes us feel good,
the brain has to find it again.

And so the moment of joy is short,

because this will trigger
the mechanism of the search for joy.

But if instead of joy
we feel anguish, anxiety, fear,

then the wave is very different.

Because it is at low intensity,
it is below the threshold of conscience,

it remains invisible from the mind,
it stays down there.

Because it has to give an alert that says:

"Remember, remember, remember."

"Run away from here, it hurts.
Run away from here, it hurts."

Our circuits are pervaded
by waves that say:

"Run away, because it hurts."

And the energy we produce
is an energy that tells us:

"Run away, because it hurts".

It seems there is no way out.

On the contrary, there is.

I told you, it's not the mind
that controls emotions,

It is a great illusion.

As a cognitive scientist,
at some point I had to give up.

Make yoursel feel "comfort",
for example, as an emotion.

Can you do it?

Make yourself feel "understanding".

Now order yourself to feel
a connection between each other.

You can't do it!

But look, we have switches,

and these switches are catalysts.

We can't turn on the light with our mind,

we have to use the right switch!

And we have to figure out
the right switch for emotions.

For example, if I ask you,

please, look into each other's eyes
with understanding. Go.

Please, hug one another
for 30 seconds, come on!

Please, stroke one another a caress,
a caress of comfort.

If we measure now the heartbeat,

if we measure temperature,

if we look at markers, such as skin color,

and the acidity of the sweat
that has been released,

we would see a change in indexes

because we have activated
very powerful neuroelectric circuits.

These are the organizers.
These are the switches.

Just think that hugging for 30 seconds

commands the amygdala to produce oxytocin,

the hormone that grants,
at the time of birth,

the ability of a woman to resist pain.

30 seconds of hugging.

So, as my son said,

I started explaining to people

that learning to look kids in the eyes,

learning to hug them,
learning to caress them,

creates permanent memories in the circuit,

which are tied to emotions
that build well-being

and not uneasiness.

It's water and bread.

Science has returned to water and bread.

And in which memories do the emotions go?

Emotions, it's interesting,

because when we put so much effort,

into studying, to try and remember,

in that moment we consume energy.

Instead the memories that are determined
by an immediate trace

are the memories that hold emotions.

But then, if we,

at some point in
our emotional short-circuit,

we do something like those things
which always happen,

that is, for example, I study, I learn,
I struggle, I experiment anxiety,

my memory stores what I studied

but also the anxiety
with which I memorized that.

And when I go back and take
from the drawer of my memory

what I have studied,

I take back not only
the information that I put there

but also the emotions
with which I traced it.

And so anxiety enters the circuit

and becomes an information
that creates a short-circuit.

And if I learn with fear,
I will retrieve the fear;

and if I learn with lack of self-esteem
I will retrieve the lack of self-esteem.

But if I learn by challenging myself
I will recover the challenge to myself.

And this, I told you before,
happens for thousandths of a second

up to whole years and years

in which the educating system

can pollute the mental circuits

or cause a pandemic healing.

I am in favour of this pandemic healing,

also because as a person of science
what I have to be aware of

are also the sciences that stand close.

And the research on epigenetics
made me tremble.

Why? Because by studying
what happens to little mice

that during pregnancy
are put into ice water,

and then they are made to give birth,

it's been noticed, and this data
should make us think

that it doesn't happen only to mice,

that their puppies
will inherit the fear-alert

for three generations at least.

As if memories of pain

were not only individual
but transgenerational.

This means that we pass on,
to protect our children,

the thing from which
they should protect themselves.

What are the two most troubling emotions,

those that worry me the most?

Guilt and fear.

I can't talk about these,

but I can tell you which are
the antagonist emotions.

To guilty conscience

the great antagonist is
the right to make mistakes.

If we are aware of this,

that we should raise our children
in the right to make mistakes,

in treating error as a process of change,
of continuous improvement,

the level of awareness changes.

We said whispers and voices.

Well, if we say "Good", "Good", Good!"

we give completely different information

because it is the emotion
that we send with it,

the indicator we are using,

that goes to the great decision maker
and says: "protect" or "don't protect".

Now I'll tell you about the last child,

since I just have 18 seconds left.

This last child reveals to you
why I've come here,

doing something crazy,
between two conferences,

because I'm leaving for Paris
for a conference on the brain

that makes me much more anxious.

So, this is not a good day.

But then, why did I come here?

I'll tell you through
the story of Anselmo.

Anselmo is an Asperger child
with very high cognitive functioning.

Like "Rain Man", to give you an idea.

I met him some years ago
because his parents, two doctors,

told me:

"You help so many children in need.

Help him too. Him who speaks
four languages, solves maths problems

as if he's attending his
second year of university,

draws the Duomo of Milan
in a few seconds without mistakes."

But all it takes to upset him,
is looking at him

and he goes into all of those
typical behaviours,

prototypical of all major
autistic syndromes.

I had never tried before to help a child

in what is the development
area of proximal emotions

But I thought that in
this extraordinary brain,

if the two structures are structures
that collaborate synchronously,

I could help the emotions
with the cognition.

And what did I do?

I asked him to jot down on a notebook

all the things that caused him
fear or anguish,

or a sense of vulnerability.

And I asked him to find,

for each of those, a strategy
to overcome this vulnerability.

This strategy didn't have
to be particularly sophisticated.

Most of the time it was
a strategy of his own,

like stomping his feet on the ground,
clapping and snapping his fingers,

but this made

this flow of anxiety go away.

So he filled notebooks and notebooks

with these kind of solutions,

and he came to present these
at a conference with 100 teachers.

We had prepared him, mark my words,

to avoid moments of unfavourable
reactions to a big audience

and we trained the teachers
to not spook him.

But at some point, while he was talking,

one of the teachers gets emotional,
she starts crying,

she stands up and applauds.

So all the teachers,

100 teachers, start to cry,

they stand up and applaud,
they get emotional.

So he panics and runs behind a curtain.

I go get him, we stomp our feet,
I take him by his little finger,

we take a hot chocolate -
and I must conclude quickly -

and he tells me:

"Lucangeli, did you see the multiplier?"

I say: "No, not really. What do you mean?"

"There were 100 teachers, Lucangeli,
some young, some not so much.

On average they will work
another 25 years in school.

Each one of them will have
at least 25 students in class.

So, with this hour of lesson,

I've helped, during my life,
62,500 children."

And I'm here for this.

(Applause)

I'm here, and I want to say it,

so that you'll help me practice
a helpful kind of science.

I'm here, and I want to say it,
so that you'll help me -

and help us, because we're many people,

to practice a helpful kind of science,

so that we'll become much
more than 62,500 people.

Thank you, have a good life.

(Applause)