Flow An Altered State of Consciousness

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FlowAn Altered State of Consciousness?

• Presented by Liana Ma
• Casey Armstrong
• Jessica Shindo

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Outline of Presentation

• Introduction
• Review of Research
• Neural Bases of Flow
• Flow as an ASC
• Significance

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1. Introduction

• Flow coined by a psychologist in 1975
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Positive aspects of human experience
• joy
• creativity
• the process of total involvement with life
• Order in consciousness

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M. Csikszentmihalyi (1990)
The opposite state from the condition of
psychic entropy is optimal experience. When the
information that keeps coming into awareness is
congruent with goals, psychic energy flows
effortlessly. There is no need to worry, no
reason to question ones adequacy. But whenever
one does stop to think about oneself, the
evidence is encouraging You are doing all
right. The positive feedback strengthens the
self, and more attention is freed to deal with
the outer and inner environment.

• Athletics being in the zone
• Religion ecstasy, perhaps nirvana
• Art, Music aesthetic rapture

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Components of Flow

• Challenge-Skill Balance.
• A balance between the demands of the situation
  and personal skills.
• Action-Awareness Merging.
• Deep involvement that makes actions seem
  automatic.
• Clear Goals.
• Certainty about what one is going to do.
• Unambiguous Feedback.
• Immediate and clear feedback that reaffirms
  actions.
• Concentration on Task at Hand.
• Feeling focused.
• Sense of Control.
• Happens without conscious effort.
• Loss of Self-Consciousness.
• Concern for self disappears as person becomes
  one with activity.
• Transformation of Time.
• Time passes faster, slower, or there is
  unawareness of time.
• Autotelic Experience.
• Feeling of doing something for its own sake,
  with no expectation of future reward.

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2. Review of Research

• 1975 - original research and theoretical model
• M. Csikszentmihalyi
• Currently studied by
• Psychologists interested in happiness
• Anthropologists interested in evolution
• Sociologists interested in contrast to anomie
• Methods
• Interviews, surveys, introspection
• Jacksons Flow State Scale (FSS)
• Multi-method, quantitative, qualitative
• For sports and physical activity
• Self-rate frequency of components on scale of 1-5

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2. Review of Research

• Examples of studies
• Intrinsic motivation
• R. deCharms, 1968, 1976
• Flow experience in elite athletes
• S. Jackson, 1996
• Flow experience and music education
• L. Custodero, 2002
• Flow and Dissociation - Emotional well-being in
  sports and recreational and pathological gambling
• B. Wanner et al., 2006
• Educational, clinical and commercial applications
• policy reviews, sports journals, art and music
  magazines, anthropological sources

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Structures ofbrain stem hypothalamus
somatosensory cortices
3. Neural Bases of Flow

• Damasio
• Neurotransmitters
• Serotonin
• Dopamine

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Brain Activation

• Activation of the right superior temporal gyrus
• Associated with intuitive leaps and sudden
  insight.
• All neuronal resources are focused on sensory
  cortex (occipital, temporal)
• self-related areas are inactive.

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Cortical Inactivation

• Feeling of losing oneself
• Inactivation of cortical areas
• Medial PFC, dorsolateral PFC, anterior and
  posterior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal
  cortex
• Rapid sensorimotor task abolishes subjective
  self-awareness experience

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Hamilton Study

• Participants who had and had not regularly
  experienced flow participated in a flashing
  stimulus task
• Had not experienced regular flow cortical
  activation high above baseline during stimulus
• Had experienced regular flow activation
  decreased when concentrating
• investment of attention decreased mental effort
• More accurate in sustained attentional task
• reduced mental activity in every channel except
  the one involved in concentrating on flashing
  stimuli, flexibility of attention

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Alpha Waves

• Elevated alpha-wave levels in the brain
• Can retain cognitive consciousness for far longer
• Gamma-aminobutyric acid produced
• neurotransmitter that blocks unwanted stimuli

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DA Release

• Shifting attention causes release of DA into
  midbrain
• High and sustained levels of DA cause feelings of
  pleasure and elation
• DA release high with rapid onset
• conscious state of pleasure or high is
  reported.

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4. Flow as an ACS

• Flow State or Flow Experience
• Is the pleasure just a side effect of flow?
• Enjoyable by definition, but also other
  dimensions (Jackson)
• Is it the same as a peak experience? (Jackson)
• Or, is it an emotional state?
• Akin to a state of rage or something like that.
  
• (Damasio) A state of emotions that has important
  repercussions on the way your cognitive apparatus
  operates.

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Losing Your Self

• Brain shuts down introspection as it enters flow
  state. (Goldberg 2006)
• Consciousness as a dialogue between specific
  self-related prefontal regions and sensory
  cortex. (Baars et. al)
• (Crick Koch 2003) Front of the brain has a
  homunculus like function where it observes the
  sensory back of the brain

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Flow vs

• Biofeedback
• More control and conscious effort
• Action and awareness are separate
• Meditation
• Is generally induced, as opposed to spontaneous
• Separation of Self from Body Dissociation
• Hypnosis
• Similar loss of control and consciousness but
  different controller.
• Displacement of Self the Hidden observer

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Being in the zone

• It can happen ANYWHERE to ANYONE - no training.
• But, it happens the easiest (and generally most
  studied in sports.

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5. Significance

• M. Csikszentmihalyi
• Emotions are in some respect the most subjective
  elements of consciousness, since it is only the
  person himself or herself who can tell whether he
  or she truly experiences love, shame, gratitude,
  or happiness. Yet an emotion is also the most
  objective content of the mind, because the gut
  feeling we experience when we are in love, or
  ashamed, or scared, or happy, is generally more
  real to us than what we observe in the world
  outside, or whatever we learn from science or
  logic.
• Thus we often find ourselves in the paradoxical
  position of being like behavioral psychologists
  when we look at other people, discounting what
  they say and trusting only what they do whereas
  when we look at ourselves we are like
  phenomenologist, taking our inner feelings more
  seriously than outside events or overt actions.

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Discussion
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5. Significance

• The approach
• Do self-reports of internal states (a.k.a.
  introspective behaviorism) lack scientific
  validity?
• Is it too fleeting to study, or do some
  individuals chronically experience flow (as in
  the case of studying déjà vu)?
• M. Csikszentmihalyi says we should represent
  consciousness as phenomenological (dealing
  directly with events/phenomena) as we experience
  and interpret them, rather than focusing on the
  anatomical structures, neurochemical processes,
  or unconscious purposes that make the events
  possible
• Lesions, pathology vs. positive aspects

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Sources
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Isabella S.
Csikszentmihalyi. Optimal Experience
Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness.
London Cambridge UP, 1992. Custodero, Lori A.
Seeking Challenge, Finding Skill Flow
Experience and Music Education. Arts Education
Policy Review 103.3 (2002) 3-9. Jackson, Susan
A. Toward a Conceptual Understanding of the Flow
Experience in Elite Athletes. Research Quarterly
for Exercise and Sport 67.1 (1996)
76-90. Tenenbaum, G., Fogarty, G., and Jackson,
S. The Flow Experience A Rasch Analysis of
Jacksons Flow State Scale. Journal of Outcome
Measurement 3.3 (1999) 278-294. Wanner,
Brigitte, Robert Ladouceur, Amelie Auclair, and
Frank Vitaro. Flow and Dissociation Examination
of Mean Levels, Cross-links, and Links to
Emotional Well-Being across Sports and
Recreational and Pathological Gambling. J Gambl
Stud 22 (2006) 289-304.
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Sources Cont.

• Hunter, Jeremy Csikszentmihalyl, Mihaly. The
  Phenomenology of Body-Mind The Contrasting Cases
  of Flow in Sports and Contemplation.
  Anthropology of Consciousness. Sept/Dec 2000,
  Vol. 11, no. 3-4, pp 5-24.
• Goldberg, Iian Harel Malach. When the Brain
  Loses Its Self Prefrontal Inactivation During
  Sensorimotor Processing. Neuron. April 20,
  2006, Vol. 50, pp 329-339.
• Jackson, Susan A. Toward a conceptual
  understanding on the flow experience in elite
  athletes Research Quarterly for Exercise and
  Sport. Vol. 67, No. 1, pp 78-90.

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• Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi. Flow. New York Harper
  Row, 1990.
• Goldberg, IIan I., Harel, Michal., Malach,
  Rafael. When the Brain Loses Its self
  Prefrontal Inactivation During Sensorimotor
  Processing. Neuron 50. (2006) 329-339.
• Damasio, Antonio. Personal Interview. 2000.