Laziness, Decisions, Action.

Busy Work, Glorious Triumphs, Disciplined Results

• Script

Philosophical Layer: Busy Work (Ancient Wisdom)

Psychological layer: \Lazy\ Why do we like being lazy?

Neurological layer: Default Mode Network

Philosophical Layer: Glorious Triumphs (Enduring Americans)

Psychological layer: \Decisions\ Fundamentals

Neurological layer: Central Executive Network

Philosophical Layer: Disciplined Results (SignatureX)

Psychological layer: \Action\ Discipline

Neurological layer: Salience Network and Cingulate Cortex - specifically the aMCC

The real issue might be balance. People who struggle with motivation often have trouble switching between DMN (internal) and CEN (Central Executive Network) (external focus). It's not that the DMN is lazy - it's that getting stuck in it without engaging with challenges creates stagnation.

Laziness in Context

• I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line of action for myself.
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
• Energy consumption and unnecessary exertion
• “Energy from food was limited, humans also were selected to avoid unnecessary exertion, and most anatomical and physiological systems evolved to require stimuli from physical activity to adjust capacity to demand.
• Lieberman, D. (2015). Is Exercise Really Medicine? An Evolutionary Perspective. Current Sports Medicine Reports, 14(4), 313-319. doi:10.1249/JSR.0000000000000169 
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26166056/
• In evolutionarily novel contexts, key aspects of psychological mechanisms may no longer be linked to the environment in the same way. This phenomenon, known as evolutionary mismatch.
• Two types of mismatch are “forced”—when a new environment is imposed on an organism—and “hijacked”—when novel stimuli are favored by a mechanism over stimuli that the mechanism evolved to process.
• Mismatch occurs because of significant changes in either (a) input cues, which have changed in intensity or quantity, are altogether missing, or have been replaced by novel cues mimicking the original cues, or (b) the consequences of the mechanism’s output.
• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721417731378

Questions

• Why do we default to energy conservation? (Default Mode Network)
• Why do we aware of the laziness but choose to not do anything? (Salience Network) and
• How do we keep going and not get back into the inhibiting state of aware stupidity (Central Executive Network)?
• Intrinsic connectivity network (ICN): a large-scale network of interdependent brain areas observed in subjects at rest.

THIS is the science behind laziness (not as an absolute, just a reference)

Default Mode Network and St. Jerome

• “Do not let your mind become a prey to excitement, for if this effects a lodgment in your breast it will have dominion over you and will lead you into the great transgression. Always have some work on hand, that the devil may find you busy.” - St. Jerome
• Small tangent: Jerome is most famous for creating the Vulgate - the Latin translation of the Bible.
• The DMN activates when individuals are engaged in internally focused tasks (i.e., those of a self-referential introspective nature), including autobiographical memory retrieval, envisioning the future, and conceiving the perspectives of others. However, the network also maintains high levels of metabolic activity at rest, in the absence of any task demands.
• https://dictionary.apa.org/default-mode-network

Central Executive Network and Theodore Roosevelt

• “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt
• In April 1899, Theodore Roosevelt is giving his famous The Strenuous Life speech

• Page 13
• “The CEN is a frontoparietal system anchored in dlPFC and the lateral PPC. CEN nodes that show strong intrinsic functional coupling also show strong coactivation during a wide range of cognitively demanding tasks.
• The CEN is crucial for actively maintaining and manipulating information in working memory, for rule-based problem solving and for decision making in the context of goal-directed behavior.”
• Page 14
• In contrast to the CEN, the DMN is typically deactivated during most stimulus-driven cognitive tasks.
• Of the three ICNs, the DMN was the first to be identified using rfMRI. It is anchored in the PCC and mPFC, with prominent nodes in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and the angular gyrus.
• A range of functions, some based on above ‘rest’ baseline activations and others based on reduced levels of deactivation with respect to control tasks, have been ascribed to DMN nodes in the functional imaging literature.
• Page 16
• The SN is a cingulate-frontal operculum system anchored in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and frontoinsular cortex (FIC), and is involved in detecting, integrating and filtering relevant interoceptive, autonomic and emotional information.
• In task-based functional imaging, the SN and CEN have been difficult to isolate because coactivations of the anterior insula (AI), ACC, the dlPFC and the ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC) are very common across a wide range of cognitive tasks.

• Central Executive Network (CEN): "Frontoparietal system anchored in dlPFC and lateral PPC"
• Primary Anchors:
• dlPFC: BA 9, BA 46
• Lateral PPC: BA 7, BA 40
• Also includes:
• vlPFC: BA 44, BA 45, BA 47
• Default Mode Network (DMN): "Anchored in PCC and mPFC, with prominent nodes in MTL and angular gyrus"
• Primary Anchors:
• PCC (Posterior Cingulate Cortex): BA 23, BA 31
• mPFC (Medial Prefrontal Cortex): BA 9 (medial), BA 10 (medial), BA 32
• Prominent Nodes:
• MTL (Medial Temporal Lobe): BA 27, BA 28, BA 35, BA 36
• Angular Gyrus: BA 39
• Salience Network (SN): "Cingulate-frontal operculum system anchored in dACC and frontoinsular cortex"
• Primary Anchors:
• dACC (Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex): BA 24, BA 32
• Frontoinsular Cortex/Anterior Insula: No traditional BA (sometimes BA 13 for transitions)

Salience Network and Rasmus Elnaes

• Discipline is the art of just doing it. It is an action. It is not about how you feel, what you are going to do, or what you have done. It is sticking to your plan and trusting it because you know you will get the results. It is just a matter of time. 

• Using time courses determined by ICA in our dynamic causal models, we focused on the dynamics of switching between the default mode network (DMN), the network which is active when the brain is not engaging in a specific task, and the central executive network (CEN), which is active when the brain is engaging in a task requiring attention.
• This work confirms that the salience network drives the switching between default mode and central executive networks and that our novel technique is repeatable.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24862074/

• The study established that anxiety correlated with salience network connectivity while executive task performance correlated with executive-control network connectivity, demonstrating a double dissociation
Dissociable Intrinsic Connectivity Networks for Salience Processing and Executive Control306.4 KiB
1. Seeley et al. (2007)

• Created the comprehensive theoretical framework that unified findings across multiple disorders, establishing the "triple network model" as a transdiagnostic approach to understanding psychopathology.
Large-scale brain networks and psychopathology: a unifying triple network model5.6 MiB
1. Menon (2011)

• Identified the mechanistic role of the salience network in dynamically controlling transitions between internally-focused (default mode) and externally-focused (executive) processing.
A critical role for the right fronto-insular cortex in switching between central-executive and default-mode networks735.3 KiB