Staying motivated is a tough call for many of us and sometimes on top of that, we feel as though our accomplishments are not enough, with respect to the tasks completed or the work left to get to. Have you ever wondered why this reaction might occur?
Neurologically, we must understand the root causes of such feelings. The main aspects that we will focus on are – Components of the brain and their interrelation.
- The brain stem (shown in green) is our automatic nervous system, which is responsible for our reactions, breathing, heartbeat, etc.
- The amygdala is the emotional center for our memories of threat responses that would cause a fight or flight to arise within us.
- The ventral striatum is a complex part of the organ that can also be referred to as the reward centre.
The interplay of the three main centers as described as:
The prefrontal cortex is essential in emotional regulation, surrounding understanding, memory, decision making, inhibitions, etc. It also uses up a large chunk of energy due to a lot of cognitive load being dumped on it. The ventral striatum can swoop in here and give us a boost of energy, using dopamine, as an anticipation of the reward when we are headed to completeing a task. The amygdala gets on alert and scans for threats of safety, which can cause our stress threshold to drop due to constant apprehension. Though, there is not a constant loop that these centres tend to follow, they tend to work hand in hand, most of the times.
In the following video, Mr. Klaasen takes us through a more detailed outline of the neurological functions and how they can act up in our daily lives, without us being aware of it. He further explains the important of constant, healthy functioning of these sections of the brain and how inability to cope may result in flip behaviors.
