Transcript (en)

Three facts about the brain. Fact number one, as the brain changes, the mind changes. For better or worse, right? So Coca-Cola on the left side and an NFL player in the moment of getting a concussion on the right-hand side. So in the better, for example, more activation in the left prefrontal cortex is associated with more positive emotions. So as there is greater asymmetry, greater relative activation on the left front portion of your brain, there is also greater well-being. Probably in large part because the left prefrontal cortex is a major part of the brain for controlling negative emotion, for putting the brakes on negative affect. So if you improve the brakes on the negative, you get more of the positive. On the other hand of it, if the brain changes due to chronic stress, for example, people who routinely experience chronic stress, particularly acute, even traumatic stress, release cortisol, which gradually degrades. It literally eats away out, almost like an acid bath. The hippocampus, which is a part of the brain that's very engaged in visual spatial memory as well as memory for context and setting. So, for example, people who've had that history and by measurement they're hippocampi because we have two of almost everything I'm going to name today, even though the convention is to speak in the singular in brain science. Anyway, those people who have lost up to 25% of the volume of this critically important part of the brain are less able to for example form new memories including alas of good things today So there we can see that as the brain changes the mind changes That takes us to the second fact, which really starts getting interesting. As the mind changes, the brain changes. And it does so temporarily and in lasting ways. In terms of temporary changes, you know, you have different flows of neurochemicals at different times. undoubtedly, even though we don't yet have the technology to really study this, when people are doing some of Bob's gratitude practices, they're getting different flows of, for example, reward-related neurotransmitters like dopamine or natural opioids. People are probably also getting an uptick. As he said, there's a general alerting and brightening of the mind. That's a traditional phrase, actually. But a brightening of the mind when people practice gratitude, that's probably correlated with more norepinephrine, which is an alerting neurotransmitter and hormone. So you can see the ways in which mental activity can produce changes in neural activity. Now the mind also can change the brain in lasting ways. In other words, what flows through the mind sculpts the brain. Immaterial information, because that's how I define mind, without resort to anything transcendental for our purposes here today. Mind is the flows of information through the nervous system, all the signals that are being sent, most of which are happening forever outside of consciousness, deep in the architecture of the brain-mind system, you know, way below the waterline, okay? As the mind flows through the brain as neurons fire together in particularly patterned ways based on the information they representing that patterning of neural firings changes neural structure It does so in a variety of ways. For example, busy regions get more blood. You know, they have more traffic. Also, mental activity changes epigenetics, gene expression. For example, people who routinely practice relaxation have improved expression of the genes, a little strip of atoms in the larger molecule of DNA, a better expression of that gene, it gets more unpacked and it's able to be active, that helps control the stress response. And as a result, those people are more resilient. It's also the case that busy regions start stitching new connections with each other. Existing synapses, the connections between neurons that are very busy get stronger, they get more sensitive, They start building out more receptors right at that synapse. Also, new synapses form. You can kind of see new neurons who are reaching toward each other. I kind of visualize the hands, the fingers of Adam and God, you know, on the top of the Sistine Chapel, trying to make that little connection there, based on mental activity. One of my favorite studies of this is taxi cab drivers in London. To get a cab license there, you've got to memorize the spaghetti snarl of streets in London, all right, this ancient city. Well, at the end of their training, the hippocampus of their brain, remember the part that does visual spatial memory, or is very involved in that, is measurably thicker as a result. In other words neurons that fire together wire together even to the point of being observably thicker Which takes us then to the third fact which is the one with the most practical import You can use the mind to change the brain to change the mind for the better. That's self-directed neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is constant, it's ongoing. We're talking here about doing it with clarity and skillfulness and intention. Speaking of attention and intention, in terms of how to do self-directed neuroplasticity, the key is the controlled use of attention. Because neurons that fire together wire together outside of awareness, but they're turbocharged for what's in the field of awareness, and in particular what's under the bright spotlight of attention. Attention is like a spotlight to be sure, but it's also a vacuum cleaner, cleaner, kind of sucking what it rests upon into the brain, for better or worse. For example, if we rest our attention routinely on what we resent, what we regret, our hassles, our lousy roommate, you know, what Jean-Paul Sartre called hell, other people, you know, when we do that sort of thing, you know, we're going to build out those neural substrates. On the other hand, if we rest attention on the things we're grateful for, the blessings in our life, the wholesome qualities in ourselves and the world around us, the things we get done, most of which are fairly small things, yet they're accomplishments nonetheless. If we do that, we build up a very different neural substrate. That's, I think, why over 100 years ago, without access to things like MRIs and so forth, William James, the father of psychology in America, said, as you can see here, the education of attention would be in education par excellence.