Rejection Physically Hurts
fMRI studies show that when individuals feel left-out, rejected, or isolated their dACC (Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex) activates in exactly the same way it does when one feels physical pain. Our social brain networks are wired as deeply as physical survival networks — and just as important. Community and inclusion are vital ingredients to our […]
Are You Training Your Brain to Beat Depression?
It actually seems like it should be a no-brainer (pardon the pun) at this point, but science is still experimenting with using positive imagery to beat depression. Fortunately, they are still finding that it does. The most interesting new finding in this study is that positive imagery coupled with the knowledge of WHERE in the […]
Can Learning NOW Prevent Alzheimers?
Alzheimers is a feared and dignity-stripping blight on many of our images of old age. Recent research in neuroscience notes that those with Alzheimers have a shrunken hippocamus–inhibiting their ability to create new memories and access old ones. Amazingly, the more you learn and keep your brain cognitively active TODAY can have influence on your […]
How’s Your Hippocampus?
The hippocampus–and area of the brain instrumental, among other things, in learning and the consolidation of memory–becomes active in its ability to grow new neural pathways during the process of “learning”. Without a healthy hippocampus, we couldn’t learn new things, consolidate or retrieve our memories, or even orient to new perspectives and beliefs. We could […]
Conflicting Truths
“David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, says in his book Incognito: Secret Lives of the Brain that the brain functions like a democracy–where different factions make overlapping decisions then battle it out until a dominating opinion wins and thus controls and directs behavior. We have conflicting truths running concurrently all the time in […]
Pay Attention to Your Life, Your Memory Depends on It
The mystics say to “be present”, and now science gives us a good reason why. The basics of neuroplasticity explain that focused attention combined with experience enable us to create neural maps. This means when we pay attention to the experience we’re having we encode that experience much more strongly, making it an accessible memory […]
A Little Coconut Oil for Your Brain
What if we had the power to stimulate our own brain growth-hormones for deep neurological healing and regeneration? What if we had the power to charge up our own mitochondria and enhance our body’s ability to control free-radicals and the growth of malignant cells? What if we could modify our own gene expression? Oh, wait…we […]
Who’s Writing YOUR Stories?
Wake up! Our prefrontal cortex regulates attention and thoughts with vast amounts of neural connections and a system of arousal and neurotransmitters. If we take no action, our default system can favor excessive stress response and disease. Science is indicating that focused attention and a perceived sense of control manipulates these connections and overrides stress […]
Physiological effects of Transcendental Meditation
It seems like it should almost be common knowledge that meditation has direct and beneficial physiological effects and vast health benefits, yet there are still many who either don’t know this, pretend it’s not validated by science, or deny its efficacy in their own lives. This concept is nothing new, nor is the scientific proof […]
Compassion Meditation Rewires Brain’s Emotion Circuitry
What if meditation and thoughts of compassion could rewire our reactions to others? If you could heighten your empathic abilities and connection to others, would you? A recent neuroscience abstract in PlosOne indicates we actually can do this very thing through meditation. “Together these data indicate that the mental expertise to cultivate positive emotion […]
