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Regardless of what some coaches will tell you, their coaching isn’t neuroscience-backed, and no, we don’t have reptilian, mammalian, or primate brains working separately. If coaching must be evidence-based, it can and should learn much from neuroscience. Neuroscience provides a broad and deep evidence base for learning new things about how our brains work and, thus, how we behave. Thus, neuroscience can improve the quality of coaching.
However, there are plenty of myths about neuroscience and coaching that are just that: myths. In today’s post, we will debunk two of them.
First, despite what many coaches will tell you in their marketing brochures and other commercial material, their coaching is not neuroscience-backed. Neuroscience-backed coaching doesn’t exist. Not yet, at least.
The most their practice can aspire to be today is neuroscience-informed, not backed. This might seem like semantics, but there is a difference, and it is an important one, as we will see.
Second, many coaches work with models based on the Triune Brain theory or variations of it. This theory states that our brains evolved by superimposing a human or primate brain over a mammalian brain, which is itself on top of a reptilian one. Thus, we have three differentiated brain systems with different functions.
This theory sounds nice, but it is probably incorrect. We don’t have three different brains that are the vestigial remains of our animal ancestors.
Let’s look at these two myths in turn.
Myth 1: Neuroscience-backed coaching Neuroscience-backed coaching doesn’t exist, but neuroscience-informed coaching does. What is the difference between these seemingly similar terms?
Neuroscience-informed coaching means using evidence from neuroscience research on human cognition, emotion, and behaviour to inform and improve coaching practice. On the other hand, neuroscience-backed coaching implies that the coaching methods or techniques are based on specific neuroscience research conducted on coaching. The former is reasonable and relatively present in coaching practice; the latter isn’t because it doesn’t exist.
Many commercially minded coaches make claims that their coaching is backed by neuroscience. The prefix “neuro” is like AI or other buzzwords: if you use it anywhere in your offer, you are bound to sell more of what you are selling.
Saying something is backed by neuroscience is commercially appealing, it makes it sound more scientific, but that doesn’t make it better or true.
Neuroscience-backed coaching doesn’t exist simply because no neuroscience research has specifically been conducted on coaching. As far as I know, nobody has analysed what happens in the brain of a coach or coachee during a coaching process, and if they have, the number of studies is so small that they do not constitute a robust body of evidence.
How neuroscience researchers study our brains
Neuroscience looks at both brain architecture, or what regions and areas the brain is formed of, and the brain function, or how each of those regions and the different pathways they form when they connect with each other, work when we think about a problem, remember something, see the colour red, feel anger, listen to a song, have a nightmare, or meditate. Every time our brain does something, different regions and neural networks activate; that is, the neurons in those regions fire up and send an electrical current down and upstream to other neurons, and they also release neurotransmitters and hormones, such as cortisol, dopamine, or adrenaline, between each other and into the bloodstream.
Neuroscience researchers study all these brain processes and the brain regions and networks being activated, and they do that primarily in three different ways.
First, they use neuroimaging technology, like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans. Different types of machines do slightly different things, but the basic premise is that by using them, researchers can map the brain in 3D and see what brain regions are activated while subjects undertake certain actions, such as controlling their emotions or doing cognitive tasks. This technology is getting better with time, and currently, it allows us to study the brain in real time with great image resolution. Still, it is expensive and cumbersome, with some machines requiring subjects to be lying down inside them or to put on something like an extra-voluminous 1950s hairdryer on their heads.
Let’s have a coaching session! / Photo from MIT News Second, scientists look at other animals. They usually study our close cousins, the primates, but they also study mice and other mammals. They can do things with animals that they wouldn’t be allowed to do with human beings. They inject them with hormones and neurotransmitters or stimulate different parts of their brains while they observe the animals’ behaviour in a lab setting. They can then extrapolate what they find out to human beings. That’s why the closer the animal they study is to us, the more replicable their findings will be.
Third, scientists also study human beings with brain lesions. Unfortunately for some, but fortunately for the advancement of science, some people tend to have lesions that damage specific parts of their brains. Scientists can see directly the effect those lesions have on these individuals’ behaviours, thinking patterns, and actions, and thus can isolate what different parts of the brain do or have influence upon. The most famous case in neuroscience history is that of Phineas Gage, who, in the 1850s, had a part of his prefrontal cortex pierced by an iron rod in a work accident. Miraculously, he survived the accident, but his personality changed completely from then on.
If you look at these three methods neuroscience researchers use to study how our brain functions, you will understand why almost no neuroscience research is conducted in the coaching field. We don’t coach animals, and coaching would not have any impact on brain lesions, so options two and three can be discarded.
That leaves us with the choice of using neuroimaging technology to study coaching subjects. We already mentioned how expensive and cumbersome it is. Having a normal coaching session while the coachee is inside a machine wouldn’t be possible. The setting would influence too much how he or she lives the coaching experience.
They could still wear one of those hair-drying-like machines while being coached, and we could investigate what is happening in their brains while they are being coached. The setting would be a bit artificial, but it could be done.
Using these machines is expensive, but as the coaching research field establishes itself, I can see this kind of study happening more often.
When that happens, we will finally be able to say that a specific type of coaching is neuroscience-backed. Until then, it will have to carry on being just neuroscience-informed.
That’s fine with me. There is plenty we can learn from neuroscience that can be applied to coaching without studying a coaching intervention directly.
Myth 2: The Triune Brain Theory The Triune Brain Theory was proposed by Paul Maclean in the 1960s and was a well-accepted theory until relatively recently. Maclean carried out anatomical studies of the brains of different animals and found commonalities between species in how the brain operates and is structured.
He proposed that the human brain, in his evolution, had developed three differentiated brain regions, the brainstem (aka ‘the reptilian brain’), the limbic system (‘the mammalian’), and the cortex (‘the primate’), each with their differentiated function.
A lot has been written about this view in coaching and other disciplines, but the most common position in modern neuroscience is that the Triune Brain Theory does not accurately reflect how our brains operate.
Debunking the Three-Brains myth
As Steffen and colleagues (2022) explain in their paper, these three differentiated ‘brains’ do not exist as such. Emotion and cognition are intertwined and work together all the time. The limbic system is not purely emotional and the cortex is not purely rational: they work in tandem, as a team, and both have a bit of both.
In their paper, they identify several problems with the Triune Brain Theory.
First, the brain did not evolve in sequential stages. Mammals did not have their more evolved brain regions superimposed onto their reptilian brains. All vertebrate animals share the same brain regions; the only difference is how developed some of those regions are.
Second, brain structures are not independent and they do not operate independently from each other. When you are feeling an emotional response, and you are angry, sad or joyful, not only does the limbic system activate, but your brainstem and the cortex do as well.
Aristotle already argued more than two thousand years ago that emotion and rationality were deeply intertwined and that you couldn’t have the former without the latter. Being sad or angry is usually associated with something that happened to you, but also with your beliefs and interpretations of that external event.
Modern neuroscience seems to agree with ancient Aristotle.
Third, current neuroscience research opens new avenues of understanding how our brains operate, which do not align with our previous conceptions and theories, such as the Triune Brain Theory.
The brain operates in networks, not isolated regions. These networks always have some activity; they are never fully dormant. Depending on what the brain needs to do based on the internal and external information it receives, one of these networks will activate. These networks cut across the cortex, the limbic system and the brainstem. They are active in all these three areas.
We don’t have three independent brains that evolved separately, but different networks that help us survive and adapt based on our internal and external needs. That’s why Steffen and his colleagues propose substituting the term Triune Brain with the more appropriate Adaptive Brain.
Our brains, after all, are adaptation machines.
Neuroscience and coaching: a bright future Despite these and other myths and the bad use of neuroscience some coaches make, many others are serious about using neuroscience to inform and improve their practice. They are genuinely interested in what neuroscience as a discipline has to offer to coaching, which is a lot.
I hope coaching will become increasingly neuroscience-informed and that we will soon be able to say it is neuroscience-backed with a straight face.
I hope we will continue to understand better how this mysterious mass of white and grey brain cells inside our skulls works, and we can use this knowledge to help people live more fulfilling lives.
That’s what we coaches are here for, after all, and neuroscience can help us do a better job, but let’s use it correctly, shall we?
