LEO M. CHALUPA is Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurobiology at the University of California, Davis.
Our brains are constantly subjected to the demands of multitasking and a seemingly endless cacophony of information—from cellphones, e-mails, computers, and cable television, not to mention such archaic venues as books, newspapers, and magazines.
This induces an unrelenting barrage of neuronal activity that in turn produces long-lasting structural modification in virtually all compartments of the nervous system. A fledging industry touts the virtues of exercising your brain for self-improvement. Programs are offered for how to make virtually any region of your neocortex a more efficient processor. Parents are urged to begin such regimes in preschool children, and adults are told to take advantage of their brain’s plastic properties for professional advancement. The jury is out on the efficacy of such claims, but one thing is clear: Even if brain exercise works, the subsequent waves of neuronal activity stemming from simply living a modern lifestyle are likely to eradicate its hard-earned benefits.
My dangerous idea is that what’s needed to attain optimal brain performance—with or without brain exercise—is a twenty-four-hour period of absolute solitude. By absolute solitude, I mean no verbal interactions of any kind—written or spoken, live or recorded—with another human being. I would venture that a significantly greater number of people reading these words have tried skydiving than have experienced one day of absolute solitude.
What to do to fill the waking hours of such a day? That’s a question each person would have to answer for himself or herself. Unless you’ve spent time in a monastery or in solitary confinement, it’s unlikely that you’ve had to deal with this issue. The only activity not proscribed is thinking. Imagine if everyone in this country had the opportunity to do nothing but engage in uninterrupted thought for one full day a year!
A national day of absolute solitude would do more to improve the brains of Americans than any other one-day program. (I leave it to the lawmakers to figure out how to implement this proposal.) The danger inherent in the idea is that a day of uninterrupted thinking might cause irrevocable upheavals in much of what our society holds sacred. Whether that would improve our present state of affairs cannot be guaranteed.