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At the Winter Olympics, skiers, bobsledders, speedskaters, and many other athletes all have to master one critical moment: when to start. That split second is paramount during competition because when everyone is strong and skilled, a moment of hesitation can separate gold from silver. A competitor who hesitates too much will be left behindbut moving too early will get them disqualified. Though the circumstances are less intense, this paradox of hesitation applies to daily life. Waiting for the right moment to cross the street, or pausing before deciding whether to answer a call from a number you dont recognize, are daily examples of hesitation. Importantly, some psychiatric conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder are characterized by impulsivity, or a lack of hesitation, while excessive hesitation is a crippling consequence of several anxiety disorders. As a neuroscientist, I have been working to uncover how the brain decides when to act and when to wait. Recent research from my team and me helps explain why this split-second pause happens, offering insight not only into elite athletic performance, but also how people make everyday decisions when the potential outcome isnt clear. We found that the key to hesitation is a response to uncertainty. This could be where a dropped hockey puck will land, when a race starts, or placing your order at a new restaurant. Hesitation and the brain To understand how the brain controls hesitation, my colleagues and I designed a simple decision-making task in mice. The task required the mouses brain to interpret signals that were predictably good, predictably bad ormost importantlyuncertain, meaning somewhere in between. Different auditory tones indicated whether a drop of sugar water would soon be delivered, not delivered, or had a 50/50 chance of delivery. How the mice behaved would not affect the outcome. Nevertheless, mice would still wait longer before licking to see whether a reward had been given in the uncertain scenario. Just like in people, unpredictable situations led to delays in response. This hesitation was not the result of vacillating between options in indecision, but an active and regulated brain process to pause before acting due to environmental uncertainty. When we examined neural activity associated with the onset of licking, we identified a specific group of neurons that became active only when outcomes were unclear. Those neurons effectively controlled whether the brain should commit to an action or pause to gather more information. The degree to which these neurons were active could predict whether mice would hesitate before making a decision. To confirm that these neurons played a role in controlling hesitation, we used a technique called optogenetics to briefly turn these brain cells on or off. When we activated the neurons, mice hesitated more. When we silenced them, that hesitation faded, and their responses were quicker by several hundred milliseconds, in line with their reactions to predictable situations. Researchers can use optogenetics to turn brain cells on or off. Daily life, disease, and downhill racing Our findings suggest that, rather than a weakness to overcome, hesitation appears to be a fundamental brain feature that helps people and animals navigate an uncertain world and avoid costly mistakes. Our study also provides insights into the balance of action and inaction in health and disease. The hesitation neurons are located in the basal ganglia, the same part of the brain affected in Parkinsons disease, OCD, and addiction. While researchers must still determine how much overlap or interaction there is between the cells involved in hesitation and those affected in psychiatric disorders, their overlap in circuitry points to possible targets for treatment. Our next step is to understand how cells controlling hesitation interact with drugs treating ADHD and OCD, conditions where patients can respond impulsively during volatile or uncertain situations. We also aim to identify which brain areas provide these cells with information about uncertaintythe environmental signal so critical to hesitation. While researchers have found that several parts of an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex encode uncertainty, its unclear how the brain actually makes use of this information, where the rubber meets the road. Hesitation is not a flawits a critical feature for navigating an unpredictable world. Whether youre a figure skater waiting for the perfect moment to launch your jump or just going about your day, the circuitry behind hesitation plays an important role in figuring out the timing to get the action right. Eric Yttri is an associate professor of biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Before The Whale, I had everything to prove. And now, to be honest, not so much, Oscar winner Brendan Fraser, 57, told AARP The Magazine in an interview last month. The 50-and-older segment is the fastest-growing demographic in the world, according to Myechia Minter-Jordan, AARPs CEO. And three years ago, Frasera Hollywood mainstay for 35 years whose career has been marked by challenges like depression and work droughtwas nominated for (and won) his first Academy Award for playing the lead in director Darren Aronofskys prestige drama The Whale. In his acceptance speech, Fraser thanked Aronofsky for throwing me a creative lifeline. In the interview with AARP, he delves further into his professional journey, sharing high points and personal setbacks, as well ambitious persistence in middle age. From Encino Man and George of the Jungle to The Mummy and The Whale, Fraser has long been a leading man. But he flashes back to his first paid gig as a mascot for a storage unit company in Seattle, making $14 an hour: Ive never been flipped off more in my life, he said. Eventually, he got acting gigs and moved from roles like “Sailor Number One” to becoming a Hollywood megastar and blockbuster headliner. Fraser also detailed struggling with depression after an incident in 2003, when he alleged that the president of the Foreign Press Association groped him at an event. He talked about the importance of safeguarding his mental health following the incident: Ive learned to check in with myself and constantly reevaluate whats important. And you also need to ask for help when you need it. Early on, I didnt know you could ask for help. I only saw the stigma of it. I was afraid to say, I need a hand. Fraser said he again found himself in a dark place when, despite being a Hollywood A-lister, he ended up in a prolonged career lull for the entire 2010s (despite the fact that he never actually stopped working). The AARP The Magazine article called it a less star-studded period in which he wasnt connecting with audiences the way he once had. The silence in a career can be deafening, Fraser told the magazine. He expounded on his philosophy of perseverance: For a long time there, I felt like I disappointed people because I hadnt met their expectations, he said. But Im still here, you know? This is what I do. This lesson in humility and gratitude can create confidence and better health. In fact, theres research that shows gratitude’s heath perks, such as greater emotional and social well-being, improved sleep, lower depression risk, and even better heart heath markers, according to Harvard Health. In this job, you live in a constant state of panic, and you cant get too comfortable, Fraser revealed. Ive learned to check in with myself and constantly reevaluate whats important. Staying true to your values and your core goals can keep you focused on your career path, too. The intersection of values, passion, and purpose can culminate across industries, whether thats working as an actor, a software designer, an account executive, an attorney, or a small-business owner. In a Harvard Business Review article titled Values, Passion, or PurposeWhich Should Guide Your Career?, writer Irina Cozma summarizes the principle: We all know following this advice isnt as easy as it sounds, Cozma wrote. This commitment to self-reliance is a continual and evolving commitment. Incorporating these mantras can help you build a career that is a combination of feeling successful, but also deeply fulfilling, she said. Finally, supporting each others mental health is crucial. Fraser touched on the importance of reaching out for helpand the same is true in professional contexts. A 2024 study by the University of New Mexicos Anderson School of Management, published in The Journal of Social Psychology, showcases how receiving help at work can mitigate exhaustion levels for workers. This research points to the importance of us working together. Being able to find unique and creative ways to still foster those relationships, even virtually, is extremely important, said associate professor Andrea Hetrick, the studys lead author, in a press release. Frasers most recent film, 2025s Rental Family, has him starring as an American actor doing stand-in work for strangers for a Japanese talent agency. Its the latest movie in his decades-long careerone marked by resilience in the face of prolonged dry spells and huge mental health roadblocks in a brutally competitive, age-conscious industry. He said he relies on therapy, as well as reaching out to friends, getting the exercise you need, even having a bit of breakfast. Theyre small things, but when youre dealing with those feelings, they can make a monumental difference.”
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Imposter syndrome happens when we have the feeling that we do not deserve what we have achieved, fearing that we’ll be discovered to be fakes or frauds. Our successes, we tell ourselves, were achieved not through our actual abilities and talents, but through some combination of luck, timing, and mistakes others made that allowed us to slip through the cracks. Nobody is immune to this feeling, and it affects all segments of the publicfrom leaders, artists, actors, and the people we see as high achievers. Sheryl Sandberg, Harvard grad and former Facebook COO, wrote in her 2013 book Lean In: Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. And every time I didnt embarrass myselfor even excelledI believed that I had fooled everyone yet again. One day soon, the jig would be up. Sandberg is joined by a long list of well-known people who have readily admitted feeling this way. But emotional intelligence offers us help and direction in overcoming this pervasive yet very common problem. Commonly understood as the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our emotions, emotional intelligence gives us the ability to understand ourselves and others in ways that increase our ability to work through our unpleasant thoughts and feelings. As an author of two books on emotional intelligence, I have written extensively on the topic. When we experience imposter feelings, they provide us with guidelines and tools that will help us to release the negative impacts that come with them. Instead of experiencing self-doubt, we will move toward welcoming our success. Self-awareness, the root of emotional intelligence, is a powerful aide in determining how we relate to self-doubt and our inner voice. When we are self-aware, we learn to create space between how we are feeling and what we know to be facts. We can choose to feel fear and self-doubt without accepting them as being based in reality. This allows us to choose thoughts that support that we have genuinely earned our achievements. People with strong emotional intelligence have the ability to relate to and connect well with others. When sharing their doubts, they soon become acutely aware of how common this problem is, allowing them to normalize their feelings around the issue. This provides them with relief that what they are experiencing is nothing out of the ordinary that needs to be feared and overly stressed about. Knowing that there are many others who experience the same thing takes a lot of the sting out of our feelings that we are alone with this experience. One of the characteristics of people who struggle with imposter syndrome is that they tend to be very hard on themselves. This was true for Suzanne Smith, a college professor and the CEO of the nonprofit management company Social Impact Architects, who describes herself as a recovering perfectionist. As Smith tells her entrepreneurship students: Imposter syndrome isnt proof youre unqualified. Its often evidence that youre growing. She has spent the last decade becoming more emotionally aware of that tendency and intentionally practicing positive self-talk. And now she shares that journey with her students and clients and the readers of her weekly Substack newsletter, helping them differentiate between perception and reality in order to build healthier habits. Often, when we’re being hard on ourselves, it means that we are giving little attention to our strengths and instead are amplifying our weaknesses. Empathy, a major aspect of emotional intelligence, helps us not only to see others strengths more clearly but also to acknowledge our own abilities and treat ourselves with compassion when we fail to reach our goals. It helps us to recognize that we are a work in progress, and to understand that setbacks and failures are a normal part of the learning process. It allows us to see our achievements, not with arrogance, but as a result of our determination and ongoing growth. One of the skills of emotional intelligence is the ability to regulate our emotions. Imposter syndrome can bring up strong feelings of anxiety, causing us to overprepare or avoid so that we dont have to deal with strong feelings. People who know how to regulate are able to keep thoughts and feelings from overwhelming their ability to think rationally and logically. They have developed the ability to remember times that they successfully overcame stressful times and to think of situations that ended well. Emotionally intelligent people use setbacks and failures as learning opportunities rather than taking them personally as indicators that there is something lacking in them. They understand that oftentimes, very successful people have failed multiple times. This way of thinking becomes useful once imposter syndrome takes hold. But when it does, we can look back and see that our progress indicates a persistence, determination, and ability that, over time, end up showing resultsrather than internal doubts about our success.
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