Journal of Marine Medical Society (Jan 2015)
The neuroscience of management
Abstract
Behaviour is wired into and a product of our brain's circuitry. In this paper we discuss the neuroanatomical templates of education, training and decision making. This awareness is important and could influence the way we train young minds, to take over the mantle of tomorrow's leadership. The bulk of our brain's volume is in two cerebral hemispheres, constituted by the frontal, parietal and occipital lobes. These hemispheres (the neocortex) act as centres of information processing and storage. Life sustenance and locomotion are controlled by the brainstem and cerebellum. The 60 billion neurons we are born with and their connections or synapses constitute the brain's ‘hardware'. While the software for life sustenance is loaded at birth, the information storage zones are blank pages. The dominant mode of information input is initially visual. Speech acquisition facilitates verbal dominance. Verbal information is initially stored in the hippocampus. Hippocampi are ‘sea horse’ shaped structures located in the medial temporal lobes which act as the ‘desktop’ for easy storage and retrieval of information. Hippocampal relations with the lateral ventricle (regenerative potential), the Meyers loop of the visual pathway and the amygdala (rage centre) provide twists in the tale. Information from the hippocampal desktop is projected in waves of bulk information transfer called ‘thalamocortical’ spindles to the neocortex. Fresh inputs modify this information by creating new synapses in a process called neosynaptogenesis. Retrieval and reinforcement of information circuits is by task performance and job training. A silent quorum of neurons (Around 70%) is the repository of our personalities and character and the seat of our souls. Decision making involves the information template. Mature decisions invokes these personal qualities (which too a r e partially acquired and hence modifiable) modulating ethical and humane decisions. Decisions made in anger may bypass the information template altogether in a n ‘amygdala hijack'. The capability of the human brain to process the varying levels of information, knowledge and wisdom anagrams bestows upon it a potential for ‘Fuzzy Logic’ and the ability to create ‘Blue Ocean’ strategies.
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