Chapter 1
Global Brain Freeze
Nonstop Overstimulation Brings Disorientation
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
—Sir Winston Churchill
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Defense.
You know the feeling: At the end of a long flight, the wheels touch down, and you instinctively reach for your iPhone or BlackBerry—pressing the on button even before the reverse thrust kicks in. Within about 10 seconds (if you’re lucky), your device picks up a signal, and then the messages start streaming in, each one giving your already overstimulated brain a dopamine hit. Maybe if you’ve just arrived in Mumbai after a 14-hour flight, you’ve got literally hundreds of incoming e-mails, a dozen voicemails, and bad economic news to process and react to: Global markets may have plunged again while you were trying to doze during the second meal service. Perhaps you’re grateful that aircraft don’t yet universally have in-flight WiFi configured, or you wouldn’t have gotten any chance to rest at all. In the sedan on your way to the hotel, you try to hack your way through some of the messages, answering those that only require a quick response and preferably little thought.
UCLA psychiatrist Gary Small’s research ...
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