What’s cool about the brain? According to me, pretty much everything!
Today I’m going to talk about one piece & that is neuroplasticity.
1949 a gentleman named Hebb came up with this phrase that you’ll hear lots of therapists reference that “neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Essentially that’s a framework for talking about how the pathways of our neural circuitry lay down overtime. This is a big topic in and of itself — in terms of human development, and pruning, and differentiation, and consolidation, and so on. I’m not going to get up into all of that today.
I was talking with a client recently and I realized — not everybody knows how cool the brain is.
So, what’s cool about neuroplasticity from my perspective is that we can change our brains.
Physical, structural changes in our brains — which I think is really fascinating.
And also, functionally — we can improve our brain functioning (e.g., cognition, memory, focus, etc.).
For a long time, this (neuroplasticity) was not known. People thought that the brain that you’re born with is pretty much the brain that you’re left with. Any damage that happens to your brain along the way, well that’s just too bad you kind of have to deal with it.
Starting in about the year 2000 a lot of those models were overturned, which was really exciting in the field, a whole paradigm shift (see work of Bruce S. McEwen, Ph.D.).
When it comes to neurodegenerative disorders there are fantastic stories and case studies about people who have really overcome adversity. Norman Doidge has two excellent books on that topic. The Brain that Changes Itself is a great read, and The Brains Way of Healing.
Neuroplasticity — essentially just refers to our brains ability to change (in a nutshell). & There are different ways that it does that.
Your brain can change.
The great news about that, is that we can change our lives.
If you can change your brain, you can change your life. Fabulous news.
There are lots of different ways to go about changing behaviors and habits. There are some great books and resources out there to for how to do that.
What I am going to talk about are essentially ways to help make your brain more neuroplastic.
What can you do today to help your brain overall?
Meditate:
The number one, best thing that you can do for your brain (aside from sleep) is meditate. There are over 1500 scientific, peer reviewed articles on meditation and its benefits. Meditation is definitely shown to increase neuroplasticity. It also helps with cognitive control. It helps with what’s called interoception — which is sort of being aware of one’s own state, or ones meta state, or thinking about your thinking,
Exercise:
The thing that we all know that we should do, that we don’t do (consistently or maybe not as often as we should). I think if you’re looking at this from a neurological perspective what’s really cool is that every time you go to the gym or go to a yoga class or go even on a walk around the block, you’re helping your brain. That might make a little easier to go do. Specifically, aerobic exercise stimulates something called BDNF. BDNF is brain derived neurotrophic factor. You also have a glial derived neurotrophic factor but that’s for another day. BDNF not only helps with neuroplasticity but it’s also neuroprotective so not only are you helping your brain be healthier today you’re helping your brain be healthier for tomorrow. You’re preventing against things like cognitive decline, and aging — we slow down and our brain slow down as well. Really any kind of bilateral exercise (e.g., walking, running, swimming, biking) also gets the two hemispheres of your brain communicating through your corpus callosum so that’s good for your brain as well in addition to the neuroplastic effects.
Learn something new / pick up a new hobby:
Try something maybe that makes you a little bit uncomfortable. Try something that’s a growth edge.
Art: Art and creativity are excellent. To which people always say “I’m not an artist, I don’t know how to do that, I’m not good at that.” Well, art is a skill and so the good news there is that you can get better with it over time. One of the key aspects of this is tapping into the creativity and also the emotional expression. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re drawing stick figures, it’s about communicating an inner reality and I think that is extremely useful. Also, even simple things like doodling helps your brain tap into what’s called your default mode network (DMN). DMN can be beneficial for creative, expansive kinds of thinking and also because our brains need a break. So, if you’re one of those people who in high school was always doodling little circles on your page, that’s cool, maybe go back to that. Draw little doodle things in your staff meeting, no problem, it’s helping your brain.
Languages: Languages are an excellent way to stimulate neuroplasticity. People who are bilingual have healthier brains overall. In addition, people who know more than one type of alphabet have really unique brains as well. For example, if I were to learn the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian/ Ukrainian) then that’s a neurological adaptation as well. That’s one more layer of neuroplasticity. There’s also Duolingo which is a pretty cool app (not affiliated). In addition to “normal” languages they have other things on there that you can learn like High Valyrian from Game of Thrones or Klingon from Star Trek which is just kind of fun and a great way to help your brain. Learning a new language helps with increasing gray matter and also increasing white matter. & In helping you have a healthier hippocampus. Hippocampus is so named because it looks like a little seahorse which I think is cool, and interesting, and unique, and fascinating.
Music: If you’re like me and can’t play musical instrument at all, then that’s a great new hobby to learn and practice. So, if I wanted to learn how to play the piano, I would be really helping my brain to grow new neural pathways. And it’s more than just learning the new skills. Yes, I’m laying down pathways for the piano. But overall that practice of neuroplasticity helps my brain in general, so learning how to play the piano helps me in numerous other ways.
Games/ video games/ brain games: Games help with control, focus, motor coordination, and problem solving. I am not a video game person, it’s not really my jam. I play Tetris, so I’m kind of basic. But there are a ton of brain games. E.g., Lumosity, Brain HQ, or Cognifit (not affiliated). I really like the Cognifit app. It has a lot of games that it tailors to your brain. So, in that sense it can be kind of challenging, but you can also just go on there and practice other things — spatial perception, memory, learning, focus, concentration, inhibition, reasoning — it’s got all kinds of stuff on there. I don’t remember them all, I think there’s maybe 30 different areas that they assess or in the high 20s, I think. It’s all scientifically validated, the games are all based on research data which yours truly really loves
Travel:
The last thing that I’ll mention in terms of neuroplasticity is travel. Most people that I know love to travel; it’s a lot of fun. The novelty, the adventure, going new places, meeting new people, experiencing new, cuisines, all of the immersion experience definitely helps your brain. In foreign countries you have the added benefit of another language stacked on top, so travel is great for your brain. If you can’t get out of the country right now, there are other ways to kind of hack it: e.g., driving home a different way, or going grocery shopping at a different store than you normally do, or even going to a park in a different part of town that you normally don’t go to
So, all of those are really easy ways, and in general pretty cost-effective ways to help your brain be healthier, to help stimulate your neuroplasticity, and help give yourself a leg up for what’s to come.
I don’t know what’s to come, but hopefully you’ll be able to meet it with a happy, healthy, aligned, integrated, great functioning brain.
I also work under the premise that neuroplasticity makes one happier.
Message me if you have any questions or if you want a little more information on how to work with me as a private client.
