Neuropsychology of Human Growth

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Background

Personal growth has been conceptualized in a very different ways depending on authors and the fields of psychology, philosophy or anthropology. Piaget considers the capacity to cope with an increasing complexity of reality as a key process of growth. Kohlberg regards growth as knowing how to deal with social complexity and integration. Erik Erikson, poses that human growth rests, fundamentally, on the integration of all human aspects throughout the maturing stages of life. Freud synthesized that a healthy person is the one who loves and works. Whitehead saw growth in terms of being more intensely what one is and the maximization of the relational experience, since reality is seen as a relational system of organisms. Leonardo Polo viewed it as the growth of personal knowledge, personal coexistence, personal freedom and personal love. Ryan characterizes human growth by focusing on self-determination. Kegan regards growth as becoming a subject that attends to the requirements that are placed “over his head” reaching a movement without limits by creating their frames of reference. Cook-Greuter speaks of a process of unification that leads to a certain assumption of the individual by the totality. The list has not end.

Neuroscience studies can help, from their own perspective more or less sectorial, to evaluate and conceptualize personal growth through investigations studying its neural correlates.

In the field of neuroscience, recent studies start to try to show the brain changes associated with this personal growth. These studies may help to solve the discrepancies in the understanding of personal growth. We would like to propose a special issue to ask neuroscientists around the world to help identify and characterize the neural correlates of the elements of human growth that will aid interdisciplinary work on the topic.

Any human process studied within neuroscience, which goes in the direction of facilitating a better understanding of human complexity, greater integration of one's own life, greater love (and, as a consequence, better interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships), better knowledge and understanding of the self, of the other and of the world can be characterized as personal growth. These processes may more specifically include improvements in personal identity, self-knowledge and self-consciousness, freedom, beliefs, forgiveness, gratitude, life’s sense, or behavior and decision making more open to reality and with fewer constrictions.

On the contrary, processes pushing a person in the opposite direction (greater reductionism, causal interpretations of self and other’s behavior, worse interpersonal relationships, more constrained decision making) constitute processes of personal decline.

Neuroscientific studies addressing the following topics related to personal growth are welcome:

1. Studies on how self-knowledge and changes in the belief system of a person lead to changes in their way of perceiving the world, the others and oneself, and how this impact their decisions and behaviour.

2. Studies that explore the integrality of the person by which the development of new knowledge or capacities might harmoniously impact the global growth of the person.

3. Studies about learning, as a wider issue of the personal growth (beyond mere learning). Also studies of habits and moral decisions.

4. Studies about the influence of mindset on personal growth. For example, the well-known fixed or incremental mindset but also, others mindsets: individual islands versus relational beings; living time in a unified way versus a succession of instants; study of causes versus concauses.

5. Challenges of psychosocial development (confidence, self-esteem, autonomy, initiative, identity, etc.) as enhancers and indicators of the growth of the person of all ages. Re-understanding of the own history, affective changes of memories.

6. Brain changes associated to personal growth processes like forgiveness, self-consciousness, gratitude, inner peaceful wellbeing, relational style and intentions behind (individualistic or cooperative developing of shared intentionality).

7. Studies or reflections which – in either longitudinal or cross-sectional studies – explore brain structure and function changes related to any of the variables indicated. Healthy populations are considered, but also patients in psychological therapy or groups receiving other integral interventions, adolescents or any other developmental stages.

Keywords: Human growth, structural and functional brain changes, personal flourishing development, brain development, competences, personality evolution, interpersonal relationships, social brain

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