What Solitary Confinement Does to the Brain | Hacker News Reader

What Solitary Confinement Does to the Brain

newyorker.com

95 pointsJabavuAdams27 comments

I found this part interesting.

"Many prisoners find survival in physical exercise, prayer, or plans for escape. Many carry out elaborate mental exercises, building entire houses in their heads, board by board, nail by nail, from the ground up, or memorizing team rosters for a baseball season. McCain recreated in his mind movies he’d seen. Anderson reconstructed complete novels from memory. Yuri Nosenko, a K.G.B. defector whom the C.I.A. wrongly accused of being a double agent and held for three years in total isolation (no reading material, no news, no human contact except with interrogators) in a closet-size concrete cell near Williamsburg, Virginia, made chess sets from threads and a calendar from lint (only to have them discovered and swept away)."

It seems that isolation works like a virus attack, slowly rendering the mind incapable of working properly. Somewhat like a mental Gom Jabbar. Some people at least seem to fight back by consciously creating stimulation. Hack and Counter Hack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Game

The story of Yuri Nosenko looks very similar to the main protagonist of Zweig's last book, written in 1942. A must read about solitary confinement, about chess, about the Nazis, about a lot of things actually.

During 10 days of silence and meditation, I had entire movies play in my head, in great detail, line by line, scene by scene. Movies I could normally barely remember. I didn't have to try, it just happened. In fact I was trying not to think. My mind wanted any kind of content to play. I think it happens naturally.

Fascinating. Makes me wonder what evolutionary necessity drove this need to constantly have content playing?

Amusing. Guess its how 'being socially engaged' has evolved.

It wouldn't surprise me if many of us develop similar traits of isolation even when cut off from internet too not just physical interaction.

Maybe its more conditioned than an evolutionary thing? We've all been barraged with media and social interaction 16 hours a day for most of our lives and most of us never stop thinking all day, and even dream much of the night.

Who knows, maybe it's part of the the low-level threat scanning aspect of our nature. Maybe it has something to do with our capacity for self-consciousness, maybe it's a side effect of being sentient.

I somehow doubt that it's a purely socially ingrained tendency though.

Interesting. Would you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert, in general? I am an introvert and when I did 10 days of silence and meditation, the lack of social interaction was the easiest part for me. In fact, I think it made the whole experience easier for me because it alleviated the pressure to interact with people. I had none of the experiences you mentioned. And I was by no means an experienced meditator.

One thing I've always been really curious about is how an experienced meditator like a Buddhist monk would deal with forced solitary confinement. I think they would probably do much better than the average, untrained person. Now that would be a really interesting experiment.

I consider myself an introvert, but people tell me I never shut up. So uhh... somewhere in between? :) Not sure why it took the form of movies, but most people do have trouble ceasing thought, as I'm sure you experienced.

Yeah, if I was isolated I would use it to my advantage and meditate. Perhaps I would exit enlightened :)

"Everyone’s identity is socially created: it’s through your relationships that you understand yourself as a mother or a father, a teacher or an accountant, a hero or a villain."

This drew my attention in particular. Is this true for all people, truly, including devout introverts, or is it merely a generalization? Does it perhaps have varying degrees of applicability based on how intro- or extroverted someone is?

No, it's not true for all people. The vast majority of people have socially-created identities, but a very small percentage of people can consciously strive to ground their identities in something else, e.g., the here and now. Devout introverts still likely have socially created identities. The applicability varies based on the degree of conscious effort applied to change identity.

I don't think it's a matter of introversion vs extroversion. Also, I don't think it's generally true.

Certainly, a large part of our identity is socially created. Yet, at the same time, there is a pretty large kernel that's there whether or not we're in our usual social circles, whether or not we change our career, location, etc. And, for some, that kernel is more important than the socially-dependent aspects.

I'd add that some parts of that kernel override whatever environment we're in. A gentleman is still a gentleman in the gutter, as they say. Just because you're in the company of thugs doesn't mean you're going to define yourself as a thug.

So, while we certainly do adapt our behaviour to the role that we're presenting, it is ultimately just a role - not our identity.

I'm unsure how this "kernel" isn't socially created too.

Whether we decide to act like those around us, or different than them, is irrelevant. The article is saying that just having someone around us to interact with in some way is vital for our brain to even function.

Introverts still have plenty of social interaction -- maybe not in the small area of recreational socialization that gets so much attention from extroverts, but our society is still made up of a bunch of people. You have to interact with them to do much of anything.

Research shows the environment overrides the kernel: http://lesswrong.com/lw/4e/cached_selves/

For an overview of the context of the state's research on, and use of, solitary confinement I'd recommend the book "Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control": http://www.amazon.com/Brainwash-Secret-History-Mind-Control/.... Despite the sensationalist title, it's a sober, wryly humorous look at the evolution of psychological coercion techniques in modern states.

Interestingly (with reference to another thread), "solitary confinement" is a necessary requirement of some forms of meditation. Of course, that confinement is by choice, and of a duration chosen by the participant. There's no doubt that the lack of communication has an effect on the brain; whether this effect is always deleterious seems disputable.

That's the beauty of the whole thing. I've seen grown men who appear to be perfectly happy break down and cry like children after only three days of meditation. Isolation puts you in very close contact with yourself. You can't distract yourself any longer, so you're left with your own thoughts, repeating delirious patterns, second guessing yourself, second guessing your life, and your environment. If you do meditation wrong (succumb to these patterns instead of returning to your breath), it can drive you insane, literally inducing psychotic lapses.

Yet if you do it right, your mind become incredibly calm and alert. Concentration becomes easy, your mind snaps into gear with a tiny push. And you end up playing a game that's trivial to learn and unbelievably difficult to master. Slowly, you peal away layers of your psyche, becoming intimately familiar with it in the process, until you get to the pristine awareness your mind inherently has.

There is wisdom and strength in isolation. You just have to learn how to get through the demons in the darkest corners of your mind.

It also makes a tremendous difference when isolation is voluntary, versus being held prisoner in solitary confinement.

Agreed. A lot of the "defiant" behaviors of the prisoners seemed to be efforts to exert some control over their environment. Also, the newer British system allowed more control in addition to less confinement.

I wonder if there's much overlap at all between the psychological effect of voluntary solitude and forced solitude.

yes I thought the same and it reminded me of this video by Matthieu Ricard:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1424079446171087119...

More specifcally at this point: 37 min 23 sec he shows a picture of a grinning monk who's just come out of 6 years of meditation. He seems to have had a rather pleasant time.

This story made me thought not about the prisioners who obviously have reasons to get crazy, but rather on ourselves, so called hackers, who sometimes adopt by own choice a life style based on short human interaction. What can be the effects of that?

Even given the fact that we're usually very social beings in the virtual world, talking to a lot and developpping strong relationships over the web, what can be the affects of the lack of talking for example? Will we lose progressively our hability to express ideas by talking and getting stronger in the writing?

I think there aren't many studies on this kind of isolatio

The keyword here is Freewill. I think you could isolate for months if it is your own choice. But if you are forced to be isolated for 3 hours it makes a huge difference.

This reminds me of a guy named Tehching Hsieh, who voluntarily isolated himself in a cage in his New York City apartment for a year. The cage and pictures of him are on display at MoMA.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/322

Anyone remember the name of the Japanese game show where the comedian was locked in a room for (n) and had to win his way free via magazine giveaways? I always thought it was fake/marketing, but an interesting.

Nasubi - http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/nasubi.html

It's like a study of this in action - insane but you can't look away.

Duplicate: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565661

What about Richard Proenneke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke

remained there for most of the next 30 years, coming to the lower 48 only occasionally

Sane hermits are rare but not unknown, I wonder what makes them different?

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