The states of Flow and Flux reduces the ruminating anxious thought loop, created by the Default Mode Network,

and increases attention of creative problem solving, called the  Task Positive Network.

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• A loss of a sense of time.

• The elimination of interference from the language centre.

• Diminished access to the language centre (a deactivation of the brain's default mode network).

• A meta-perspectival approach.

• Seeing things in new combinations

• Seeing things in their totality.

• A sense of life being richer.

• A renewed sense of wonder.

• An almost mystical activation of the mind.

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The term ‘Flow’, was first introduced by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. He became intrigued by the immersive state exhibited by artists, whose total absorption in their work caused them to ignore hunger and fatigue. He began to research these phenomena in an attempt to understand the process of intrinsic motivation or ‘autotelic’ activity. He carried out research with people who were engaged with various activities including chess players, dancers and rock climbers. Csíkszentmihályi ultimately termed this state ‘Flow’ because interviewees would report a sense of being carried along in a current of water. The condition of Flow is characterised by a sense of being at the edge of a challenge which is difficult enough to strive to complete it, but not so difficult that incremental improvement is unachievable.

Responsive Drama  projects (information on the 'Examples' page) produce Flow+Flux:

• More intense emotional states than Flow, such as empathy, sadness and frustration.  

• Connected to an experience which includes a deep reasoning, intense curiosity and appropriate negative experiences.

• Instigates an environment of change, unpredictability, transition, modification, instability, fluctuation, innovation and novelty.

• A diminishment of the ego and sense of self.

• An awareness that the self is malleable and flexible--not fixed.

• A feeling that the self has been destabilised and has acquired more complexity. 

• An ability to be open and welcoming to new situations. 

• Diminished aversion to new perspectives.

• An ability to identify with others, a sense of unity and an elimination offeelings of isolation.

 

A study* claims that, although role playing is central to social interaction, the topic has received little investigation from cognitive neuroscience or psychology. However, the researchers say that there has been a large amount of interest and research into the ‘perceptual phenomenon of theory-of-mind (ToM)’. Part of the objective of their study was to record ToM processing with functional neuroimaging methods, whilst amateur actors demonstrated an acting method, originally founded by Konstantin Stanislavski. This method incorporates identification with a character and perspective taking, through an experience of the inner sense of self, and an embodiment of an outer sense of self.   The results of the study illustrated that during the acting sequence, the subjects lost a sense of themselves and the ‘DMN (default mode network) was strongly deactivated in all four of the conditions in this study’.

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*Brown S, Cockett P, Yuan Y., ‘The neuroscience of Romeo and Juliet: an fMRI study of acting’, (R. Soc. open sci. 6: 181908. 2019) <http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181908>