Mouse time

The mice are leading us. My wife read online the other day that mice that have a certain amount of quiet time each day develop more connections in the part of brain that stores memories and strengthens focus. The conclusion? Quiet time may be good for humans too.

Now there’s something worthy of front page attention! I don’t necessarily object to the reasoning behind it. But I must admit to a certain disillusionment with the process required to reach it. To begin with, the mice all died. So the ones that were lucky enough to have a couple of hours per day of decreased environmental stimulation weren’t so lucky in the long run. They benefitted from better attentiveness and neurologic functioning only to suffer a shorter lifespan in their cages. Obviously, that’s a rough trade-off for them. It saddens me that we still raise and sacrifice mice or any other species to perform such studies.

There’s another reason though that I find the report a bit deflating. This one has to do with human insight and, dare I say, wisdom. Have we really failed to progress so far such that we need to prove the biologic importance of intermittent calm – i.e. basic peace and quiet – in our daily life?

There is plenty of medical literature for human health that reports a reliable correlation between excessive stress and poor outcomes. There is also millennia of human experience that demonstrates the same association.

When’s the last time you felt good commuting to work in heavy highway traffic or a super-crowded subway? I don’t see too many people seeking out opportunities for constant stimulation. Quite the reverse. More and more of us decry the encroachment of continuous noise in our modern lives. It is harder, in fact, to find protected moments to breathe, to withdraw, and to just be.

No worries though – business models have developed in our midst to help us learn to block out the noise. Unfortunately, much of that industry targets the unwelcome intrusion that comes from the space between our own ears. And so we teach ourselves to find calm amidst the growing cacophony through meditation, breath, and other self-soothing techniques. There’s nothing wrong with this; those skills are vital for survival in the modern world. I just wish we’d pay a little more attention to the sources of our discombobulation and discontent. It would be great if we worked together to turn down the volume, even just a bit, of the 21st century.

I can hear the scientific rebuttal.

“The mouse experiment helps prove that there is a connection between regular periods of peace and the health of our brains!”

Ok. But why is that a big advance?

“Because this could demonstrate the importance of interventions such as breaks at work, or quiet zones in hospitals, or rest for the elderly!”

Hmmm …

“You don’t understand at all. This is evidence! People who make decisions about policy and payments will have to listen. All of us will have to listen. The brain is plastic! It can change. Positive habits directly relate to positive brain health. People need to know about this research!”

Many years ago, medical science showed that support groups for women with breast cancer improved outcomes. When I scratched my head about the need for such a study, I was told that the results would change insurance reimbursements. Well – they didn’t. Then I learned that the researchers didn’t expect to see benefit from the support groups. They didn’t think that such activities “worked”.

We haven’t come as far as we think we have. Think about it. We’re still experimenting with the brains of rodents in order to learn more about our own. We’re still playing the human value game by the rules of economics. We’re still designing studies to demonstrate what it is we already should know, subjecting what we used to know to a different set of criteria.

I’m not saying that learning about the intricacies of who we are and how we work isn’t worthwhile. I am saying that we should be careful about how we define worth before relying on imperfect so-called objective studies to do that defining for us. We may put our core values at risk.

Despite this, I offer a big thanks to our four-legged friends who participated in this research. While I wish that you might have lived your days under your own schedules for quiet time, I appreciate the new terminology you’ve given me for communicating my need for some peace and calm in my own life. Why just this morning, when I was staring into space and my wife worried that I wasn’t feeling well, I was able to gently whisper “Mouse time” in response to her concern.

She knew immediately what was – or wasn’t – happening inside me. And she winked and left me to my mindless staring.