Admitted it is
in a society constantly exposed to idealized images of the body a
dissatisfaction with our own body image runs deep. Recent findings suggest that
more than 60 percent of adults reporting feeling ashamed with the way they
look. The problem is also expanding to children with more than 30 percent
school age children. In several countries. Feeling the image concerns. And
these concerns have wider implications affecting both physical and mental
health. For example leading to depression eating disorders and low self-esteem
young people with low self-esteem further leads to socializing isolation and
less participation in educational activities and sports. In parallel with this
increase there's an increase in mis sold solutions. For example cosmetic
surgery has become normalised and a significant amount of people now elect to
go invasive surgical procedures just for aesthetic purposes. In parallel to
this there is also an increase in the so-called beauty products and related
services. They are marketed as though helping the consumer to achieve the body
as advertised and allegedly feel better about themselves. In reality more than
28 published empirical studies involving more than 4000 men and women in
several countries find that exposure to such notions and images make us feel
worse about ourselves
Because the
problem is not simple and neither is the solution trying to change the multiple
problematic mirrors of the self in society and in family is likely to require
large scale policies that are slow to implement. Thus an alternative would be
to try to understand how the brain builds its own resilience against
externalized images. So at any given moment our body is bombarded by stimuli from
the environment. But the brain does not perceive it all. Instead we filter the
world and we perceive only what our preexisting models tell us to perceive.
Pretty much like Morten and your just told us about. Because that will not be
enough because we also need to adjust. To the changing world in order to do
that. What the brain does is it uses errors between what we expected and what
we experienced in order to update the models and predict the world better. Next
time. But if that's the case how does the brain build its balance its optimal
balance between stability and adaptation between resilience and change. And it
turns out that hierarchy may be key to the brain a certain evolutionary older
systems that it will not update no matter what the world throws at it. And what
are these systems. They are the systems that monitor the inside of the body and
tell us how we feel at any given moment. Is my heart beating right now. Maybe
you're feeling cold or hungry. That's even though we have multiple ways of
representing the self. Ask for example in the so-called social media selfies.
At the same time the organism makes sense. We never forget a basic needs. Even
though people think it's what they see in the mirror on the screen that
satisfies or upsets them.
In reality is
what they feel on the inside of the body. But if it's an inside of the body
what can we do about it. Well it turns out that one answer might be in the
skin. The border between inside and outside. We have recently found that gentle
stroking of the arm as in romantic and maternal relationships might have a
unique relationship with the self and might directly influence with all the
system. For example we can determine whether we perceive a prosthetic arm to be
ours or not. It can also help resilience in traumatized children and people
with dementia and in healthy older adults. This unique. Relationship has been
known from animal research from at least for decades. We know that animals
without grooming rough and tumble play and touch. Are weaker organisms and more
distress. And we know and now little bit about the neurobiology of these
effects. Even more importantly we now know in humans that safe neuro peptides
such as oxytocin can easily be sniffed in the laboratory in the clinic or in
society and lead to better social trust more pro social behavior and comfort in
relationship. But we have not applied this insight to our most enduring
everyday relationship that with our own body. So I think there are some
preliminary evidence showing that. Effective touch and oxytocin can improve
symptoms in eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. However we now seem to
have the means to apply that to the body concerns that we all have in society
and try to build our resilience towards excessive externalized images.
More generally
I think it's time that we apply to our social and technological world these
insights we can build softer different kind of cities different kind of
computers different kinds of robots and it's time for hard sciences and technology
to also take softness into account.
This sounds a
bit female stereotypically speaking a bit childish.
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