the Brain At Rest One of the most interesting things about neuroscience, is the discovery that our brains use more energy at rest than at work. Sleep is also something that helps us. Roger Federer
sleeps ten hours a night. He naps for two hours a day.
Our brain has an executive network and a default network. Scientists found that when we are at rest, our brains use more energy, is MORE active, and that exercise is part of the default, or rest, network. Professional athletes have the most restful, or creative brains, where they are problem solving while at rest. Serena Williams at Wimbledon, when she beat her sister, had the mental development to use her default network to make instant decisions that look amazing, but have taken years to learn. Athletes by their very nature, have developed a default brain network which is active, more active than their executive network because they have put hours every day into training it, and athletic training is also at the same time, training the default brain.
The default network is the medial prefrontal cortex, behind your forehead. This section regulates decision making and long term planning, long term memory. Someone without a healthy frontal cortex would not understand long term affects of unhealthy choices. This particular area uses the most energy at rest. This is a very important part of the brain to get rest. Long term planning problems? There isn’t enough rest for the frontal cortex to establish mature plans.
The middle of the brain is also controlled by the default network. The posterior cingulate cortex imagines the future, is used for navigation, the wandering mind, and memories of our own life.
The precuneus at the back top of the brain controls everyday memory and spatial identification between objects.
The fourth region of the default network, that thrives on rest and rest can be exercise, walking in nature, staring at clouds out a window:is the angular gyros, above the ears and at the back of the head. Reading, writing, your view of the Constitution, interpretation. These are the skills requiring rest in the angular gyros default network of the brain.
Yesterday in LeMonde, there is a feature about returned Ukrainian children who are unable to play.
https://lnkd.in/e-NdZ-79'It's like they're coming out of a cult': Ukraine tackles Russian indoctrination of repatriated children.By Faustine Vincent (Special correspondent in Kyiv)LeMonde, Nov. 6.”1,762 Ukrainian children have been repatriated after being forcibly transferred by Moscow. Ukrainians are working to de-indoctrinate them and are warning that today, all children living under occupation, Russified and militarized, are being torn from their country without even having to be physically deported.In three and a half years of full-scale war, Oksana Lebedeva thought she had seen everything. But since she began caring for children repatriated to Ukraine after being forcibly transferred by Russia, the founder of the NGO Gen. Ukrainian discovered an even darker side of the conflict. "Their behavior is very different from children traumatized here by the conflict," she explained. "When they come back, after being indoctrinated, they don't speak, don't play, don't trust anyone and don't even look at you." One aspect particularly surprised her: "They are all extremely docile. That shocked us. They are ready to give everything and behave like little soldiers." She gives each child a notebook to write about their experience. One boy took a red marker and wrote in large letters: "Top secret."To date, 1,762 Ukrainian children have been repatriated out of 19,546. Moscow began mass transfers of these children at the beginning of its invasion in February 2022. Since then, Ukraine has worked to recover these "stolen children," some of whom were adopted by Russian families, with Moscow erasing their identities by changing their names and dates of birth, and moving them around frequently."
Dr. AndreeanGruev-Vintila, in her research book, Coercive Control, reveals that coercive control is an invisible system, That fits itself over a person’s life. It just becomes, through the efforts of the controller. This can begin by telling a woman she can’t wear red lipstick anymore, and it progresses to how much money she may have, what clothing she an wear, how long can she speak with her children. If she violates, her restrictions are told to her. Then further restrictions are applied. She has no choice. This is implied and acted upon. It is much faster to create this web-like skin over children and the controller starts here. This is the enforcement of the coercive controller, but the net is described as anything but a net, to outsiders. The common familial, happy, busy, family, is. Outwardly discussed, but strangers may notice disparities. Anyone who attempts to dishevel the system, is released, forcefully.
Art therapists are working with the returned Ukrainian children.
The default network of children who are both hunted and extracted, are likely unable to rest. They have been deluged with propaganda, moved about, so that they don’t have solid ground. It does not take so long for their long term and recent memories to be harmed.
The children who are removed from their home by family courts are no different. Everything normal and safe is destroyed and they can only try to survive.
Athletics is possibly one way to re integrate children with safe parents (not false parents, in Russia, or harmful ones who construct the net, which is made of metal, not string) Amateur athletes also have a larger default network in their brains. If a child loves a sport, then that can be encouraged.
Staring at a pond. Swimming. Lying down and doing nothing. The children who have been barraged into constant executive brain activity, without rest, need to be understood. The removal of their sport activity, the jettisoning of their play, the net like control of their movements, has been forced upon them.
The Brain at Rest, Dr, Joseph Jebelli, Random House, Canada, 2025.