Here's what is happening inside someone's brain when they experience a flow state, writes ckbergland
Thanks to the pioneering work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, what we commonly refer to as"flow" became part of our shared vernacular in the late 20th century. Over 30 years ago, he published a bestselling book that isolated nine components associated with flow state experiences.
Some highlights of this seminal book include his observation that flow states involve"balance between skill level and challenge " and"goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities." Csikszentmihalyi also posits that"the activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action" and that"people become absorbed in their activity, and the focus of awareness is narrowed down."The latest fMRI-based research by Richard Huskey and his UC Davis colleagues builds on our fundamental understanding of flow by focusing on the neurobiological basis of flow during media use. The authors write in their paper's abstract, Here, we show that flow is associated with a flexible and modular brain-network topology, which may offer an explanation for why flow is simultaneously perceived as high-control and effortless, even when the task difficulty is high. Flow tends to occur when task difficulty and individual ability are both high. This graphic illustrates Csikszentmihalyi's"Flow Model" and shows how finding a sweet spot where skill and challenge are balanced facilitates flow state experiences, seen here in the upper-right quadrant with a smiley face emoji.For this study, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to see what brain areas"lit up" with activity and what brain areas went quiet as a cohort of participants played a video game inside an fMRI brain scanner. The fMRI neuroimages showed that people who self-reported flow state experiences had the cognitive flexibility to click into an"energy efficiency mode" that effortlessly optimized whole-brain functions by strengthening some neural networks and silencing others.As expected, the researchers found that when the challenge of a video game's difficulty perfectly matched an individual's skill level and ability, they were more likely to self-report experiencing a flow state. Notably, these flow experiences were marked by robust
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