#1 Neuroscientist: After Watching This, Your Brain Will Not Be the Same: transcript

Today on the Mel Robbins podcast, the remarkable power of your brain to grow and change with worldleading neuroscientist Dr. Lara Boyd. After this conversation, your brain will not be the same. The single largest driver of change in our brain is our experience. There's no drug. There's no magic bullet. It's the experience you engage in. And that's where actually we can map and show this is where you're changing brain. How long does it take to rewire your brain? Well, we just did it. What do you mean? As long as you're challenging yourself, you're struggling and it's hard. You're changing your brain. You can build the brain you want.

>> Dr. Lara Boyd. >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Welcome. >> Thank you. >> I'm so excited you're here. >> I am really I've been looking forward to this so much. >> I love your research. I love this topic. And here's where I want to start. So, there's a person who is listening right now who has no time, but they've made time because Dr. Boyd, they really want to learn from you. >> If they take everything to heart that you're about to teach us about the brain, neuroplasticity, the fact that we can change over time, what could improve about their life? I want to start by saying I listen to the show and I've heard you say many times that people can change their brains.

They have this fundamental capacity for change. I absolutely couldn't agree with you more. I want to take that idea and I want to stretch it. And with that knowledge, it should be very empowering for you to go out and continue to make that change to understand why sometimes it's hard, why sometimes you struggle, why sometimes you fail. And I hope you walk away knowing that all of those things, failure, struggle, difficulty, are actually very good for the brain, very healthy for the brain. I want to give you an example of the power of that. So, did you know that if you take school children and you teach them their brain changes when they learn, their grades go up? That's remarkable. Like you can improve your child's grades just by helping them understand. That's all I needed to do.

>> I know, right? Where were you when they were in high school, Dr. Boyd? Really? You just tell children >> this power of knowing they have the capacity for change shifts their mindset and enables better academic performance. So here's the important key ingredient if you will. The single largest driver of change in our brain is our experience. There's no drug, there's no magic bullet. It's the experience you engage in. So if you know that, then you can choose experiences that are really positive, that are things you want to learn, places you want to be, people that are healthy and positive for you.

And by doing that, you're shaping your brain. And so by engaging with Mel and I today and having this conversation with us, your brain will not be the same after this conversation as it is when we began. right now. From here forward, it changes. And I just think that's amazing. And I hope you do, too. And I hope you do, too, because it's just the most exciting thing. Dr. Boyd, I'm not sure I've had anyone sit in that chair that's caused me to have goosebumps that quickly into the episode. Often in life, it's easy to feel as if life is coming at you and all you can do is respond.

But when you said the word experiences you engage in, it made me feel empowered and it made me think that maybe I have more control over the way my life feels than I currently do. Could you just kind of broaden what you meant by experiences you choose to engage in? >> So, we know experience is what's changing our brain, but we also understand that engagement and motivation are large influencers on those experiences.

So, we see a larger effect of things that we're paying attention to, we're motivated to learn, we're engaged in, we're working hard at. Those are going to change your brain to a larger capacity, to a greater degree than things that we may be more passively observing, letting come by us in different ways. We can actually see this when we do imaging studies of the brain of people who are engaged versus kind of passive experiencers. We see different networks of the brain light up and we see different long-term effects of those experiences, if you will, of that engagement. That's super cool to think that based on some of the choices that you're going to talk to us about, we have the ability to actively change our brains and that that can improve our lives. For the person who does not know the term neuroplasticity,

could you just Dr. Boyd explain what is neuroplasticity? Neuroplasticity just means brain change. Your brain is now we understand to be incredibly plastic, so malleable. So it's changing and shifting. And it's it's doing that all the time. It's been doing that from the moment you took your first breath and it's going to do it until you take your last breath. So this is a lifetime of change in our brain. Wow. So Dr. Boyd, why did you want to become a neuroscientist?

>> I'm very interested in learning. I always have been. And my first career was actually as a physical therapist. And my job was to help people with brain injuries and stroke get better. Now, this was in the early 1990s, so a long time ago. And I had a patient that broke me to be quite honest. Young man, he'd had a bad head injury. He was a wonderful young man, beautiful family, lots of support, and he needed to be able to walk to go home so his family could take care of him. And we worked so hard. I worked with him for three months. We did everything. I asked for help from experts. He worked so hard. I worked so hard. And I couldn't help him.

>> Yeah. >> And it forced me to come to a decision point. So I realized I was a car mechanic who didn't know how the engine worked. And you brought me your car and it was your precious car. And I couldn't fix it. in a moment that could probably be described as a professional tantrum because this all happened within two weeks. I quit my job and I applied for a doctorate and I went back to school and I have been trying to understand how the brain works when we learn and in particular then what happens after it's damaged and we're still learning and relearning ever since. You know, Dr.

Boyd, this will probably be the only time I actually correct you in the conversation we are having today. I would not call that a professional tantrum. >> Oprah Winfrey would call that an aha moment. >> Okay, we can reframe it then. I like that. At the time, it felt a little self-indulgent. >> Uhhuh. >> I think my parents were alarmed. >> Yeah. >> But I just felt I had to make a change. I couldn't continue this way. We had there had to be more. I had to understand more in order for me to be able to help people. And here we are.

>> I love that. And you know what else I love about that is that it's easy to think >> that you are stuck doing what you're currently doing >> and your story both in in being a physical therapist and wanting so much to make a difference and saying I have to learn more. I have to figure this out changed the trajectory of your life. And now here we are 30 years later and you're about to teach us everything that you've learned in your research that will help us use our brains to change our lives. I mean talk about full circle.

>> It's pretty exciting. >> Yes. I'll take that kind of professional tantrum. So what have you discovered Dr. Boyd is really happening inside the brain when we learn something new? >> So when we learn we're changing our brain in in three fundamental ways. So we change the brain's chemistry, we change its structure, and then we change its function. And so the first thing that happens when we start to change our brain is this change in brain chemistry.

And this is because our brains communicate through the sending of small chemical packets, if you will. They're called neurotransmitters. They're just little chemical signals that go from brain cell to brain cell. Now, what's exciting about these chemical transmissions is the chemistry of our brain can change quickly, really fast. This is the basis of short-term memory. So, we've all done that right away. Even in this conversation, we're changing the chemistry in our brain.

We're creating these short-term memories that are going to allow us to maybe make a long-term memory and remember this tomorrow, maybe not. That depends on a lot of different things. >> So, give me an example of a short-term memory that just got created. So, we were talking a little bit ago about my patient, for example, that struggled to recover and that was a that was now is in your shortterm memory. Yes. >> So, you you may have recalled a certain detail about that or not. >> He couldn't walk and he needed to be able to walk in order to go home >> to go home. So, tomorrow maybe you remember just that he needed to do something to be able to go home. You can't you don't get the walk part.

>> Okay. >> Um and so that would be a short-term memory. Now if you do recall all of that tomorrow, you've created structural change in your brain. >> Ooh. >> So changing brain structure takes time and critically it also takes sleep. >> The third thing you said was function. >> Function. Yes. So our brain operates as this integrated network of regions that are turning on and off together. And these regions are going to shift the way they're functioning together with practice and with learning. So for the person who's listening right now, because a lot of people listen and take us on a walk, or maybe right now you're listening and you're driving a car. Can you explain kind of how you're using even more functions in your brain?

>> Absolutely. Driving was the example I was heading for. Actually, you read my mind. Driving is such a complicated task, right? We have things we're doing with our feet, with our hands. We've got vision. We've got this complicated visual environment. and we're probably like listening to music, maybe eating our lunch, doing many, many things all at once. It's a wonderful example. So, when you first learn to drive, you're very focused, right? You maybe don't have the radio on, you probably shouldn't have the radio on, and you're just focused on the operation of driving. As we become better and it becomes more automatic, we can pay less attention to the actual physical parts of driving. We're now continually to pay attention to the road, if you will. And that is allowing those other parts to be available to do different things to listen to music, to maybe have a conversation on the phone, maybe to be able to eat or have a conversation in the car, right? And so because you've freed up those brain regions, they can do multiple things at once. And that's a

part of learning. I'm curious what has uh patients who have experienced a stroke or traumatic brain injury taught you about our brain's ability to change and grow. So firstly, working with people with stroke and head injuries, we now understand that the brain is capable of massive reorganization um after that damage occurs. That reorganization has some critical time windows though. So we know that very early after injury the brain's neuroplastic capacity is very heightened and it has this larger ability for reorganization.

That capacity doesn't end. We continue to have it but it does diminish with time. So we know it's really important to intervene early to help people recover. The other thing we've really learned is that we now understand that there are areas of the brain that can take over lost functions. So things that can no longer be controlled by the area of the brain that's damaged can be taken up elsewhere. However, those functions are never quite as good. They're never quite as able as they were before. So people are going to recover some ability, but it may look different. The other thing that we've learned is that it it matters a great deal how healthy the brain is before it's injured.

So the the story of a younger individual who maybe has an incident to their brain when they're 20 versus someone who has that same incident to the brain when they're 70, they're going to look very different in the outcome. >> Okay. >> One thing that we understand is that immediately after the injury, the brain is less inhibited, which means it's more excitable, >> and that excitability seems to lend itself to more neuroplastic change. Now, this window of excitability after stroke, for example, seems to last 30 to 60 days perhaps. Let me just make sure I'm tracking because I think it's super important. So, are you saying that the research shows that after somebody has had a stroke, there's a 30 to 60 day window where the brain is ripe for the interventions that help somebody recover from the stroke?

>> Exactly. >> That's cool. >> It's very cool. and and it lines up with the timing of our interventions medically. However, at the end of that 60 days, let's say, most people are not fully recovered. This is where we run into trouble because what happens? They get discharged from the hospital and they go home and they're struggling now in their daily life and they may not have access to much continued therapy. Therapy is very expensive. However, if you can continue to intervene in that time frame, you can draw out this period of recovery. We talk about it of keeping the window of neuroplasticity open. We can reopen and hold that window open, keep it going longer, but it takes a real important dedicated effort. You said failure, struggle, difficulty are very good for the brain. Why? We've done studies using magnetic resonance imaging. So, an MRI like you might have on your knee. We can look at the brain and we can see the brain changing in response to

interventions and experiences. And what we found, what we think about is that there's a sweet zone of difficulty. So I have something to show. That's correct. >> Yes. >> So I have this nice uh prop if you will to help explain this. So So let's talk about difficulty and struggle. Yes. So we've done work scanning people's brains while they're learning. And what we've discovered is that if something's too easy, if we're over here, >> well, you don't need to change your brain because you can already do it, right? No, there's no need. It's feels good. But you're not changing your brain. You're just repeating something you can already do.

>> If something's too hard, right, if we're over in this zone, >> I'm quitting. >> You give up, right? You just can't accomplish it. And so there's no practice that can take place. >> Oh, >> you want to live here. You want to live where something is hard, where you're sometimes failing, but often you're succeeding and you're struggling with that activity. And that's where actually we can map and show this is where you're changing brain. This is where neuroplasticity is actually taking place. Give me an example.

>> So we have created a game uh it's a computerized game for people with stroke for example. And in this game, it's a very important game. You're going to use your stroke affected hand and you have to catch an asteroid before it hits the Earth and blows us all up and we all die. >> That is an important game. >> It's an important game. And you get a score of how many lives you've saved. So your hand is a little spaceship and you reach out and you catch this asteroid and then you have to throw it into an extractor. And we actually we do good. We extract minerals from it. You get these little scores. So it's a motivating game. It's an engaging game.

You're having an experience. And what we can do is based upon the person's ability make that game easier or harder and then map their brain. >> And so we see that when we make that game hard, when they're struggling, when they're success rate is right around 50 60%. So it's hard. This is when we're seeing the most neuroplastic change and specifically we're seeing them change their brain structure most at that particular time as they're practicing the task. And importantly for people with stroke, they're also changing their ability to move their stroke affected arm because as they're chasing this asteroid, we are actually slowly moving them farther than they thought they could move. We're pulling them out farther away. And so this is kind of the sweet zone of of difficulty that we've found. The important thing about this idea is that your optimal challenge is going to be different for you, Mel, than

it is for me. And it might be different for me from day to day. We have days where we're really good and days where things are just harder than they should be. And that's okay. That's reflecting where your brain is in that day. And as long as you're challenging yourself, you're changing your brain. How would you apply this to something like the gym? You know what I'm saying? Like getting yourself in that sweet spot where you don't really want to be doing it. >> It's very hard. I mean, I think it's kind of cool to think about the fact that the things that you push yourself to do that feel hard are really good.

Not just in the case of the gym for your muscles, but that the things that you push yourself to do that are really hard are really good for your brain development. And and any example you take, it's true. So at the gym, you know, you're always pushing. You don't want to quite fail. You want to hurt yourself, but you're right on that edge. You lifted this amount, you know, two days ago, and now you're going to bump it up, and you're going to bump it up. It's the same principle in your brain as you would with strength training. You're going to make it a bit harder and make it a bit harder. And this is true really for no matter for whatever we're learning. It doesn't it doesn't really matter. Um struggle is going to be good.

And you want to always be working towards this little bit harder level of difficulty. You are studying somebody who survived a stroke >> and you are forcing them to learn maybe new movements whether it's moving an arm that had been impaired due to the stroke and while they're doing it you're mapping their brain and measuring chemistry, structure and function. >> We can measure all three of those in the MRI machine now. It's really exciting.

So we can measure neurochemistry in certain areas of the brain and look at the neural signal, the chemical neural signal. We can image the structure of the brain in a couple different ways actually. We can look at how some brain regions will get larger with practice or smaller with less practice. >> And we can also then look at how the connections of the brain are changing. So how well connected is one brain region to another? And that's also a structural change. And then lastly, we do what's called functional MRI where we can see what areas of the brain are lighting up as people are doing different tasks and learning. What I love about this is you're not just showing up here going, "Yes, your brain can change neuroplasticity." You're like, "No, I I have imagery. We study this. We can see the chemistry, the structure, the function. We see the changes happening in real time. And if this can happen in somebody's brain who

has had a stroke, >> right, >> then I take it it can happen in mine and the person listening. >> Absolutely. >> So for somebody that has a learning style like I do of dyslexia um or you've got other neurodeivergent issues going on in your mind. What excites you, Dr. Boyd, about neuroplasticity and the brain's ability to change? Whatever your learning style is, if there's a label on it, dyslexia or no, you still are very capable of neuroplasticity. Everyone is. And instead, I think we need to think about people as just learning differently.

>> Maybe at a different scale, maybe at a different time frame, but they're still learning. They're still making change in their brain. They're still showing neuroplasticity. So we did a study a few years ago where we took individuals who showed below average mathematics scores and we had a large cohort. We had kids across the third grade and some with better mathematic scores. We actually were able to show that there was an area of the brain that was less welldeveloped in the children with the lower math scores. And so it was really a biological um explanation for why they were struggling in math for that time in their life. And it suggests to me at least that it may be that these children have capacity to learn. Maybe their brain just isn't matured enough yet for that level of math. So this is a newer field called educational neuroscience where we're starting to understand how

school at least affects the brain and at what points in different children's lives are they ready to learn certain things. That's so cool. So I really look forward to a time where we understand the brain well enough where we can precisely prescribe what educational intervention are you ready for now and what therapy is going to be appropriate for this person with a damaged brain and really start to have precision around our interventions and our learning outcomes. So it could be that we look like we're learning the same and our brains are doing totally different things. We've done experiments where we find this. So we had a task we asked a bunch of people both healthy people and people with stroke to learn and then we looked at they all learned it by the way they all showed they learned it was great and then we looked at their brain activity and they were all doing something totally different but they all learned and that was kind of my first

hint that like oh we have a problem here we were thinking everyone did everything the same way before that this is one of these things we've learned in our in our research so from that forward the question then becomes is one of those strategies more effective or are they different ways to the same point different pathways to the same endpoint maybe it doesn't matter. So as long as you're learning you you're doing it like that's great. >> Well what I'm learning from you Dr. Boyd is that everybody's brain is unique and different but everybody's brain has this ability to grow stretch and change based on what you force yourself to engage in.

Exactly. >> Which is super cool, >> right? >> Can you really change your brain at any age? >> Absolutely. And I feel like I should just like throw the mic on the floor and walk out the door, but I won't. >> You can. >> No, we can. And that's what's just so astonishing and exciting. So, that's really the big learning in the last 30 years. >> My dad who's 82, >> your dad who's 82, >> my mother-in-law who is 89 can change. >> She can absolutely change. I can change. You can change. and our kids are changing and we will continue to change.

The trick here is that you have to pick what you're changing because remember we can change for better but we can also change for worse and it's going to depend upon our experience and the experiences we're engaged in. If we're continuing to be engaged in things and we're continuing to experience in them deeply and struggle to learn them, our brain is going to change to do that. But if we do nothing or we do very little M >> then our brain will also change and it it won't be for the better. You will actually lose capacity. So it's just like a muscle. It's a use it or a lose it situation. I'm going to ask this question because I almost felt the person listening thinking about somebody in their life.

Maybe a widowerower. Maybe somebody who has gone through a divorce or lost a job. and you go through these seasons where you withdraw and you're grieving. But if you are not engaging in life and you're not challenging yourself and you're not pushing yourself to do the hard thing, even if that just means leaving your house today or forcing yourself to apply for that new job, is there a period of time where you lose it? You do >> what >> your brain is that neuroplastic. So if we're not engaged, what we see is we will see these losses in function. You even see kind of a wholesale reduction in capacity for neuroplasticity. You'll see increased inhibition in the brain, making it harder to actually get out. And so there's actually a neurobiological reason why it's hard. It doesn't just feel hard, it becomes hard to turn parts of your brain on. And there's some

interesting examples of this. So people with depression, for example, have a much easier time remembering bad memories than good ones. So neurochemically, they become more inhibited. We see that after stroke as well, longer term after stroke. You'll see that part of why it's hard to move that stroke arm is because the corresponding brain region has now become overinhibited and suppressed. And so it's hard to move it, you know, kind of biomechanically, just the motion and the activity of the muscles, but it's also hard to even activate the brain to get it to move. And that's also neuroplasticity. So it's it's kind of a promise of you can change if you want, but there's also peril in not changing and not engaging.

We have phases in our life where that happens though, right? We become depressed. bad things happen unfortunately in the world. I think the important part to take away is that even if you are in one of those low places, you can push through it. You can start to take those small steps to re-engage to have different experiences and maybe take on some different activities that will promote you back towards a more excitable brain, a more neuroplastic brain in a positive direction. Well, I also think it's helpful to know that if you're in a period in your life where you've been withdrawn >> or you're going through a challenge and everything feels hard, >> that your brain can still stretch itself. And the hard thing today is relative to the fact that you've been in this kind of withdrawal grieving mode.

And if you can push through and start to do the things that feel hard that things will start to become easier. >> Yes, they will eventually. I don't want to discount that it's hard though because it's hard and >> Yeah. And we've all been there, right? At different phases in our life. >> Yes. >> Right. But I do want to make sure that people understand that you can push through. And as you're pushing, it might feel like might feel like you're pushing and nothing's moving. Right. But slowly by slowly, you can change back the other direction.

>> Hey, it's Mel. I have a crazy amazing invitation. I want you to come to Vegas with me and Oprah Winfrey. >> Please come because it's going to be the ultimate aha experience using the sphere as um a lighthouse to really ignite the light within people. They they're going to feel something really profoundly with a sense of knowing your greater value to the planet to intention to your calling and your purpose. That's that's the whole idea.

>> Holy cow. It's at the sphere April 2nd through the 4th. You do not want to miss this. It's going to awaken something incredible in you. You're going to get exactly what you need. Connection, inspiration. Holy cow, community. Your mind is going to be blown. Aha. April 2nd through the 4th live at Sphere. A call to wonder to joy and the ultimate aha. Visit ahalive.com for pre-sale sign up and travel packages. And you better go fast. I already got my tickets. I'm going with my daughters and some Oh my gosh. I'll see you in the audience.

Dr. Boyd, what are three things you can do to rewire your brain? The easiest three things would be sleep, exercise, and engage in activities that reduce your stress and in doing so reduce your stress hormone cortisol. I want to dig into each one. So, let's start with sleep and what happens in your brain and what happens with neuroplasticity and learning when you prioritize getting a good night's sleep.

So when we're sleeping, we're taking those memories that were made in the short term by the changes in chemistry and we're allowing the brain to consolidate them into a long-term memory. So this is actually the process of learning is you have to have sleep in the middle of practice and then practice again and practice again if you will because that is where that chemical change is being transformed into a structural change in the brain.

So I I tell my students I'm a professor at a big university and I say you can't cram for the exam. I mean you can you could come in here could stay up all night and form all these short-term memories and then you know write my exam as fast as possible but you won't have learned it. So I hope you won't need that information later on. And since I teach in the med school we're hoping they'll remember what is happening in the brain when you sleep. So this is when we see structure actually changing in the brain. It's hard to map in a human brain because it's happening on such a small scale.

But there's an idea that what we've done the day before is actually being replayed in our brains as we're sleeping. And so there's experiments done by people who need less sleep than I do because they stay up all night studying sleep. It's very ironic. Well, we're actually having people sleep all night long in an MRI scanner and they can see that if they have someone practicing a task during the day and then they scan them all night, they'll actually see those same brain regions reactivated almost as if we're practicing offline. Maybe we're replaying the memory as we're sleeping.

That's one idea. There's some other ideas around different phases of sleep and how they may affect learning. You know, we have these times in the night where we're deeply asleep, times of the night where our eyes are actually moving under our eyelids called rapid eye movement. They may be supporting different types of memories. I think that the the jury is still out scientifically as to exactly what is happening in sleep. >> That is so essential, but certainly we are very clear that if you don't sleep, you don't learn.

>> Dr. Boyd, what are the brainchanging benefits of exercise? Exercise is rocket fuel in the brain. And it can be many different forms of exercise. So any exercise helps. You don't have to sign up for the Boston Marathon. We're not going to get too crazy. You can if you want to. It's wonderful, very fun. You can walk, you can garden, you can dance. That's exercise. If you're tighter on time, the exercise that we study in my lab is called highintensity interval training. So hit Horrible.

>> Well, the good news is it only takes nine minutes. >> Okay. >> So, for the busy person, this might be for you. What what we do in the lab is we pair these short bouts of very intense exercise. So, people do three minutes at 85% of their maximum capacity, hard as they can. And I have stroke patients doing this. I have 85 year olds doing this in my lab. They do that three times and then they practice a task they're trying to learn and we see significant increases in the amount that they learn in that task by pairing it with that exercise and then we can map and see all the changes that exercise is inducing in the brain. So we did this amazing experiment in my lab.

It's it's one of the best and most exciting ones we've ever done. My graduate student had people exercise and then practice a task and we looked to see was there an effective exercise versus no exercise on their learning and we saw nothing. The not exercise and the exercise group look exactly the same. So they slept and the exercise group had significantly improved from where they were the night before. They got better overnight with exercise paired with the practice the day before. The rest group that didn't exercise, they just practiced the test. They look exactly the same. So it suggests to us and we think that this is one of the things exercise is really doing is that it's helping that consolidation process. So it's helping that overnight learning if you will.

>> So what exercises? Because now now that you've told me that stroke patients are doing this, now I feel like I can't be complaining about it. So in my lab, we use a cycle on a bicycle that people can ride because it's in a tight lab environment, but any kind of high-intensity exercise or these interval trainings seem to be very powerful on the brain and actually also powerful on our metabolic system. So work from my colleague at the University of British Columbia, her name is Theresa Lou Ambrose, she's looked at strength training, this bouts of this very intense strength training and shown that it is particularly powerful for women.

And that what we find is that they are not falling as much. Their bone density and bone muscle mass goes up. That's all great. But what she found that she didn't train at all is their cognition, their thinking improved. And it seems to be a very particular advantage of the strength training in older women in particular. So that's another way. The other kind of benefit of all these exercise interventions, you know what they do? They help you sleep. And so you see this kind of cycle go together, right? So you exercise, you sleep better, you're less depressed, then you might exercise and you start to spin up what we call a positive feedback loop.

>> So one positive behavior leverages the next and the next. So, I want to talk about how I can do this at home because it sounds like if I push myself for three minutes on a bike or I lift some heavy stuff and do some strength training, I'm going to get some some like brain juice >> that makes me remember things or learn faster or just think clearer. Is that's what's going on? Like, how do we apply this? >> How do you apply it? So if you engage in any exercise, what you're actually doing is releasing a neurochemical that makes your brain more neuroplastic.

It's called brain derived neurotrophic factor. And what it does is it allows our neurons to reorganize more easily. And so it's a byproduct of exercise specifically in both our muscles and our brain. What type of exercise you engage in, it depends on what you enjoy. Remember we came back to engagement and enjoyment. So what is it that you like to do? I like to cycle and run and I love to ski. Those are my three favorites. Maybe you really enjoy walking or rock climbing.

Um it really could be anything. And do I have to do it for a certain period of time or is just literally getting your rear end out the door for a lousy walk around the block and moving your body will start to activate not a technical term, my term brain juice. Yeah. >> To help you think more clearly. >> It will. >> That's pretty cool. >> I think it's amazing. >> And the third thing that you said that is really good for brain health and neuroplasticity is anything that you do that lowers your stress.

So when we're stressed, we release a stress hormone cortisol. And cortisol has this negative effect of blocking the growth factors that allow the brain to be more neuroplastic. So they compete. So I sometimes describe this as imagine you've got just a few parking spots in your brain and if cortisol is parked in them, we can't get our trophic factors that allow brain change into that same spot. It's full. So if the parking lot's full, flooded with cortisol, we're not nearly as capable of learning as if we can reverse those cortisol cars out and allow our trophic factors to come in and now allow the brain to be more capable of neuroplasticity. We actually did a study in my lab some years ago and we were looking at people who practice yoga versus runners. My student brought me the study and I will tell you I'm a runner and I was like, "Oh, the runners are going to be better than the yoga

people." I live in Vancouver so everyone does yoga so I have great disdain because I don't do yoga because I'm very inflexible. So >> well you know you can change Dr. Boy and if you do hard things and get on that mat your brain and your flexibility will change >> be so much better. And I really should and when I tell you the findings of this study am I going to feel silly because what we looked at was how people responded to a stressful environment. a stressful situation. We had people in the MRI machine. We're imaging their brains as we're putting them into happy, fearful, and stressful situations.

And we're looking at how the amygdala reacts. And in those runners, that amygdala lit up like a fireball. And I felt kind of silly because in our participants who practiced yoga, and these were not people who did a million hours a week, they did three recreational classes a week, maybe, maybe two. Um what we saw was the amydala turned on but then other memory structures turned on. And so our inference and from our interviews with these folks we took away. They were able to see that environment that stressful environment and observe it and judge it but they weren't taken over by it. And so there maybe is something to these practices of meditation, mindfulness, maybe that's a part of yoga that may give people an ability to more easily deal with a stressful situation when they see it. We right now are running a study of a a meditation or a mindfulness

intervention called loving kindness meditation. And so what we've done is we've taken teachers, we've looked at their burnout rates, their rates of depression and anxiety. They've engaged in this loving kindness intervention, meditation intervention, and they practice it on their own for 30 days. They have one class, they practice it, they come back, and we see significant change in their levels of burnout and in their brain. So your hypothesis so to speak because you're in the middle of this study is that this particular form of meditation and can you explain for the person just briefly who does not know what the Cuz I only recently >> figured out what this was.

>> Sure. It's a form of practicing self-compassion. >> So just giving yourself a break. And I and I don't know if there's anything special about this form of meditation. I think the practice that you can find or the environment you can put yourself in >> to reduce your cortisol, to be more mindful, >> to be compassionate with yourself, all of those things are incredibly helpful and we can see their impact on the brain. >> That's so cool. >> Dr. Boyd, how long does it take to rewire your brain?

>> Well, we just did it. >> What do you mean? >> So, we've done it today. We've done it in the time we've been speaking. So, this is such an interesting question. And I think it was Malcolm Gladwell who popularized this idea that we need 10,000 hours of practice to learn something well to become a master. So I can tell you that you're you changed your brain in the first hour of practice in that 10,000 and if you did 10,0001 you're still changing your brain, right? So I don't think there's a magic number. It's happening. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of practice. But you're incrementally changing it with every trial of practice, every hour of practice, every day of practice. That may also be different from person to person. So in my research, we call this the dose problem. So what's the right dose of practice to change the brain?

And we really don't know. And one of the reasons we struggle with this is because it's different for every person. So as a scientist we try to run a big study and then have some statistics and come to one single answer but I don't know that there's a single answer. I think that maybe is very simplistic and it depends on the learner what you're trying to learn and how well you're trying to learn it. But I think what we can take away from all of that is that every time you're practicing, you are changing your brain a little bit more, a little bit more. And the accumulation of practice across time is what's going to really lead to a lasting change.

>> Your point is when you actively engage in certain types of activities, particularly ones that are kind of hard for you to do, >> that's an example of your brain rewiring itself. ing itself in real time. The other part of that dose issue is you can't just practice at the same difficulty over and over again, right? It needs to get harder as you go. >> Oh, wait. So, hold on. Wait a minute. >> It has to get harder as you do it for it to force a structural change in your brain >> to keep changing it, right?

>> Can you give me an example? >> Sure. Well, let's say you want to learn to play piano. So, the only thing I can play on the piano is chopsticks, >> right? >> Yeah. >> And so, if I just keep playing chopsticks forever, I'm not changing my brain. I can already do it. So continuing to practice that is is not helpful. So if I really wanted to be able to play the piano, I really wanted to change my brain to allow that, I would have to move on to a more a somewhat more difficult piece and then a somewhat more difficult and somewhat more difficult. Well, what I love is you can reframe the fact that it's hard >> as evidence that you're changing your brain.

>> Absolutely. >> And that you're growing. Yes. >> I would love to talk about visualization. >> Dr. Boyd, what's happening in your brain when you are intentionally visualizing something? Whether it's a race that you're going to run or it's a date that you're going to go on or it is you uh working hard on something that you care about. What's happening when you imagine something? >> So, when you're imagining something, you're mentally rehearsing it.

>> Okay? And do you remember I said that our brain is functioning with these networks of activity. So different brain regions are lighting up together. >> When we mentally rehearse, those same brain regions are lighting up. >> If you're mentally rehearsing a movement, for example, every brain region lights up except for the motor area. So it's as if we get all ready for the movement and we just don't issue the go command, if you will. >> Yep. >> And so this is why most elite athletes engage in mental rehearsal. This is how the race is going to go. Exactly. It's a great way to get more practice without it being physically exhaustive. So, you think about maybe the stroke patients that I work with. This is a way for them to go home and practice moving. It's safe.

>> They're not going to fall. They're not going to need help >> and they can continue to get a high dose of practice. >> Now, the type of visualization actually matters. It turns out you could imagine being on the ceiling and looking down at your body or you could imagine you're in your body and you're engaged in it. And it turns out that if you're in your body, you're more firsterson engagement, that mental rehearsal is going to have a better effect on learning and on brain change than if you're a kind of observer from the outside. So if I have like a big sales meeting, >> you're saying Dr. void. Don't imagine a scene where you're seeing yourself >> doing the presentation. Imagine a scene where you're looking out at the audience or the people around the conference room table.

>> Because what what happens when you imagine it from inside your own body? So, when you're imagining from inside your own body, you're generating predictions of what it's going to feel like. So you're almost preping the sensory experience that you're going to have. And so it makes it a more realistic form of practice. There's a part of your brain called the cerebellum that's very good at these predictions, >> predicting errors and correcting for errors. And so you're letting it engage in that preparation with you. And that's why it's probably a more effective approach. That's super cool. Isn't it neat? Yeah, really neat. Um, Dr. Dr.

Boyd, as a neuroscientist, what is your opinion on manifesting? >> Manifesting is really interesting. It's a way of visualizing as well, but kind of projecting that visualization or that mental rehearsal. There's some evidence that as we're doing mental rehearsal, we're visualizing or manifesting how we think something's going to go, that we actually are um generating activity in one of the what we call reward circuits of the brain. So, another one of these chemicals in our brain, this one, dopamine, which is a very positive, it's our reward chemical. We did something good. It's like our little brain gold star, like you you did it. That when you're thinking about manifesting something, visualizing, you may be getting these dopamine releases that are highly reinforcing towards that goal that you have, towards what you're working towards. And so that is one of the kind of theories if you will for why

this may be an effective tool. The other thing that's really interesting about manifesting is we think that it's a way of preparing the brain for what's to come. >> Um the word we use would be priming the brain for change. So getting the brain to a state where it's ready to take on that new information, that new task. And so it's almost like a practice or a preparatory phase so that then when you do have the physical engagement, your brain is actually ready to take the most up out of it. Manifesting is a tricky one, but there certainly is evidence to suggest that it has these strong effects within the brain and we we think that's why it can be a positive um I guess a habit if you will to engage in.

>> Can you explain Dr. Boyd, why starting the day with a statement, today is going to be a good day. How that works in your brain. I love that and I want to agree. I think this is a wonderful way to start your day. When you start your day off with some kind of a a positive affirmation, you again are are priming your brain for what's to come. You're preparing your brain. You're setting the brain table. This is going to be a good day. So in that process, you've pushed down your stress hormone. Cortisol is going down.

You're releasing dopamine because you're predicting something positive, right? So you're getting your happy, if you will, neurotransmitter out. And if you take that forward, there's really good evidence that people who are optimistic, who demonstrate this optimism across their life, they actually have better brain health and they have better outcomes after their brain is hurt. And so the overall idea around kind of this optimistic projection is you're changing the neurochemistry of your brain and you're setting your intention if you will and then you're much more likely to follow through on that as you move through the course of your day. Are there other things you could say to yourself or sentences that could have that kind of positive upward spiral effect on your brain? I think doesn't probably matter the content of the sentence. Whatever it is you can pull out that's going to push you towards

that optimistic state. That's what's going to work best for your brain. So today is going to be a great day or >> this is amazing. I feel so lucky to be here in Boston with you. Really just expressing and we know that the expression of gratitude can be a very very healthy thing on the brain for all these reasons that we've talked about. It's probably falls into these cortisol, this bin of what I call cortisol reducers. So, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I have this opportunity that I had a family that allowed me to go back to school and get a PhD in my mid20s. How lucky am I? Many people would have loved to do that and maybe couldn't. And I don't take that for granted. I take that forward with me in my day. I remind myself of that often. Um, and that then how lucky I am to be able to be here and basically get to learn things for a living.

>> An active practice of gratitude is forcing yourself to notice what's going well >> instead of stressing about the things that aren't >> right. And based on everything that you're teaching us, I can only imagine that when you force yourself to notice what's going well, there must be a positive wave happening through all three of the things that you talked about, the chemical, structural, and functional part of the brain.

>> That is indeed the case. So we see that um it's again bringing that engagement and that priming to the act of learning. People who practice gratitude again have better neurochemistry in their brain, less rates of depression, and again, you're spinning down these negative things, spinning down your cortisol, reducing your depression, probably sleeping better, and so on. I'd I'd love to have you explain an example that I think has happened to all of us. And it's that phenomenon that happens when you either decide you're going to buy a new car or you see a car and you're just like, "Oh, I love that car." And then suddenly you see the green Rivian pickup everywhere.

And the day before you didn't see it. What's actually happening in your mind when you suddenly see the cars or you hear the song that you just said? It It's really an awareness building that's come to you. Like, of course, there aren't more of those cars. They were already all there. That is a marvelous car, by the way. They were already all there and now you've just brought your attention to it. So, attention is another really interesting thing within our brain. We know that attention plays very importantly into our ability to learn and it also plays very importantly into neuroplasticity.

So the things we pay attention to, we're better able to change our brain around. So whether that be a task you're trying to learn, whether or not you're looking for a particular car or you've noticed a song, right? >> Yeah. I love this idea of dropping down the cortisol through some of these very simple interventions that feel more important now that we understand >> how they impact the brain, >> right?

>> We were talking about uh learning styles and how basically everybody's brain learns a little bit differently. How do you figure out how your brain learns? It takes a bit of self-experimentation to find it. In terms of what's your style, what's going to help you be the best learner. I think that that comes to just practice. Be okay if it fails. That's okay. Failure is great. I've had lots of failures. I've had many experiments not work, many grants not funded. I mean, the life of an academic is mostly failure to be quite honest. But they're all instructional. Like, this didn't work. Okay. Well, let's do that. Like, that's really important and interesting next. And so, that's what you have to do as you're learning for yourself. What is your style? What's your environment that's going to work the best? You can help yourself by doing these other things we've talked about. Reduce your cortisol, exercise, sleep, >> be engaged, try to learn something you

really love. Like, I will tell you, if we were talking about calculus, I would be decidedly less passionate. So, one of the one of the treats I get to have is I learn what I'm I'm I'm learning about what I'm obsessed in already. >> So, it's it's not hard, right? Because I I think about it. I wake up in the night thinking about it. I think about it on my run. It's >> kind of what what I do and what I'm really really interested in. >> And then the last thought there is that's going to change throughout your lifespan. What you're interested in, >> how you're learning, and in what environment you're learning best. It shifts with time. I love the uh council to really just think about the environment or the ways in which you best learn. Like my husband loves working in a coffee shop >> because I don't know what it is about the noise and the activity. He just is able to focus.

>> So interesting. >> I can barely pay attention to the cup of coffee I'm drinking because there's so much distraction going on. So that would be an example for me of going can't work in a crowded environment like that. The other thing that I've learned about myself in terms of the way my brain works is if you hand me a piece of paper and expect me to read something and retain it, I can read that thing probably faster than anybody, but I don't remember it. But if you tell it to me and I've also learned that I am better if I am responding to something >> versus having to start it. And another thing that I've learned is I'm obviously a talker. And so it may be helpful as you're listening to this podcast to know that the books that I write I typically talk out. And then uh it's really easy with all the tech today. You just record

yourself and then you can transcribe it. And once you see what your words look like on paper, it's so easy to respond and edit to it. For me, my first degree is in English literature. I was going to be an English professor. Life intervened and I went another way. But I love to think of things as stories. >> So I actually think of my science just as a story. That's why I love talking about it. I'm just telling you the story of my science. And so for me, that's how I learn. That's how I engage is, okay, what's what what story are these data telling us? That's why I say to my graduate students all the time, we might not like the story they're telling us.

Maybe it's not the story we expected, but just a story. Dr. Boyd, I'm going to put myself on the spot. >> And I'm going to ask you to coach me, okay? I have always wanted to learn conversational Spanish. And I have a gigantic story that I am incapable of learning languages. I took seven years of French and cannot remember a damn word of it. I am dyslexic. Did you hear the stories coming? I've I've always struggled with this. Yeah. And I've always wanted to do it, but I have a story that I can't. Can even I learn Spanish?

>> You can. It's hard though. And languages. It's interesting you chose language because language is a is kind of a special more special category. >> Okay. >> So, I'm going to get to use this and I've been so looking forward to it, but I have a brain model. >> Fabulous. So, this is a a human brain and we're just looking at two sides. So, this would be the front. Your eyes would be up here and you'd have your ears on the side here. >> And so, this is the back. And so, humans very uniquely have this front part, this pink area. This is your forehead. Your forehead. Yeah. It's called the preffrontal cortex. We have this big piece of brain that we develop that pushes out forward that no other animal really has. This area of the brain is really important for paying attention, what we call executive functions and then judgment. So is that a good idea?

What could happen if I and then fill in the blank. And so what we find is that our brain is kind of maturing according to what we need. So we get our our motor and sensory area first, vision, and then it slowly kind of works forward in its development. And so coming back to kind of our our language coaching, these areas on the side, this would be your your areas where language is especially specialized on our left.

>> Oh, it's like right over by my temple. >> Yeah. You know, if you stuck your fingers in your ears, you'd hit it more or less. Got it? I don't, but it's there. And so it's on the left side in particular language in most humans. Occasionally it gets flipped but most of us it's on the left. This is wired up relatively early and it becomes difficult to change which is why it's hard for you and I I only heard English as a child. I'm assuming you did too. >> Yes. >> And so it becomes harder for us as adults. >> This will be another thing I blame my parents for. I'm just kidding. That was a joke.

>> We can we can blame them as well. But you told me earlier that you're a very auditory learner. very much. So my suspicion would be my my prescription the experiment we could do on you which would be fun is you need a Spanish immersion. So you need to just go in fact this is your excuse. You need to just go to Spain. Um pick a great city. >> My husband and I are talking about doing the Camino trail next year. >> You're an auditory learner. So you need to go and as you do the Camino, no English.

None. that I'm going to be practicing before I go because I want to talk to Chris while we're on it. >> Only Spanish. You have to immerse and you're going to have to force your brain to rewire. >> You know what this sounds like to avoid? It sounds very hard, right? >> What we need to do. >> It's exhausting. It really is exhausting. So when my daughter entered into this late French immersion in elementary school, the teacher said, "I will speak English to them the first week of school and then never again."

And she said, "By Christmas, they'll be responding." And I thought, "Oh my gosh." And my daughter came home multiple nights in tears. She was so frustrated. They did math, they did science, they did everything. By Christmas, they were speaking in French. It was truly remarkable. In fact, I kicked myself. I'm like, "We I should have been scanning her brain the whole time. Like what was I I missed it. I had a twin in French immersion and a twin not. We could have done the perfect twin study, >> right? I'm a terrible scientist, but >> but you're an amazing mother.

>> I was trying to just dry tears and Yes. But I do suspect that for you to just immerse in auditory language, I also would be the key >> realize the auditory and the speaking of it is what I need to do. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I don't care about reading it. I just want to be able to speak it. >> I think that once you were there and you were fully immersed, the reading would come very naturally. But >> you know what I'm gonna do? That's a hypothesis.

>> I I am going to this is going to be the thing that I'm going to learn and I'm going to start practicing. What are the best things that I can do to help what I'm learning stick? >> So repetition is a big one. Okay. of just again again looking at it in different ways. So not just wrote repetition but let's turn it on its side. Let's look at it upside down. Let's repeat it back. So that would be one because again our brain does require this dose of practice in order to show that it's learned and then remembering that you have to sleep to have that memory be consolidated.

So, you're going to have to practice it and then come back later and see, did you actually learn it? That's a test. It really is. The next day, how much did we learn? And then practice it again and then come back the next day. Dr. Freud, could you take us through kind of from waking up through the end of the day, what are the habits and routines that really support neuroplasticity and better brain health?

Well, first you're going to have slept. I think starting the day with something positive is really important. Could be gratitude, could be this is going to be a great day and here's why. Give yourself some ideas. Exercise is certainly going to be in there. By the way, and I haven't said this, doesn't matter when you exercise. It could be right before you practice something. It could be right after. Could be a little bit later. Seems to not really matter a great deal when that occurs. Thinking about how you can keep your stress low or your cortisol down.

Even it and and and you could be in a stressful environment and still think about being mindful, letting it go, being compassionate if you can't keep it all up. You're not perfect, and that's okay. Pushing yourself to learn something hard, being socially engaged seems to be very important for brain health and brain plasticity. And always trying to learn something new. So, what is it you're trying to learn? and let's practice that today.

You know what I love about that is that you just proved the statement that you said at the very beginning of our conversation, which is that simply by listening, you're going to grow and stretch your brain. And one of the reasons why I love this podcast so much is because I learn something from every single person that comes on this show. And I almost feel like my brain is getting bigger in my head because of your brilliance. And now I'm like, "Oh, this is so cool. She's in a lab and she's researching the brain and studying all this stuff and doing all these cool things. And now she's teaching me and now I feel like I have a big brain. It's like the elastic pants only it's the elasticity in my mind to learn new things."

>> Talk to me about being social. >> Yeah. So being social seems to be one of these things that helps to reduce depression, >> to increase engagement, to cause you to have to practice our interactions. Like the complexity of the thought and the cues, the social, the verbal, the non-verbal cues, all of those things together seem to be really important for brain health. Think we're just built to be a social species. We want to be in a group and we want to be in a group that values us and loves us and cares for us and those things together seem to be quite important for healthy aging. I can I can see that and I got to ask you Dr.

Boyd is there something in particular as a neuroscientist that you do as your evening routine that is supporting brain health and neuroplasticity. when you get paid, you're told from a small age like pay yourself first. Take the money you're putting in your savings and and do that before you do anything else with your money, right? So, I always think about for me, my days are so busy and I travel so much. I always pay myself first. I actually do it in the morning. I'm going to flip your question before anything gets in my way every day. I exercise. I'm I always say I'm paying myself first. in the evening where I'm really trying to position myself is trying to be able to get to sleep. So, I'm a woman. I'm getting a bit older and my sleep is not as nice as it used to be. Actually, I can go to sleep. I just can't stay asleep. This is my challenge of the last few years. And

so, I've been really working hard on actually my sleep hygiene. So a good dinner, less alcohol sadly, and then moving towards right then moving towards what do I need to do to be able to sleep. And so in in the world right now, one thing I've learned that I need to do to be able to sleep is not to watch the evening news. It just spins me up. So again, just thinking about what is going to raise my cortisol in the evening and I know that >> and don't do it >> and don't do it, right? Whatever that may be. and and usually that's involving looking at what's happening in the world.

>> And the last thing I do is I treat myself to just a little bit of reading. And that's a habit I lost for many years when my kids were home and I just didn't have time and my children are both at university right now. And to just settle with a good book in the evening is it's gosh, I'm boring and old, but it really is helpful to me. And in those periods in the night when I wake up and I don't know if this is helping my brain health or not. But laying and thinking I need to go back to sleep doesn't help. I've done that experiment. So my new experiment is I just give myself a break and I get up and I read for a little while >> and then I try to go back to sleep and we see how it goes.

>> I love how normal you are as a neuroscientist running a huge research lab and teaching at a medical school and it makes it very very relatable and accessible. Dr. Boyd, if the person listening takes one thing away from this conversation, what do you think the most important thing to do is? >> I think the most important thing is to engage in something that's hard. >> Learn something new. Acknowledge that it's hard. Acknowledge that struggle is going to be good for your brain. But we should always be pushing ourselves to learn something new, to do something that's hard, and to do something that's challenging. And it doesn't matter. It could be the guitar or needle point or botchi or how to make sourdough. Like any of it works.

>> Any of it works. So it's just that engagement and that push of what it is that you're trying to do that you can't do now. >> So what are we stretching ourselves to learn? whatever it might be. Now I'm going to have to go do yoga. Darn you. But we, you know, whatever it may be that we are not able to do now that we'd like to be able to do. So always pushing and expanding those horizons that's really setting us up. And I I think that if you can just take away one thing in all that because it will be hard is that just remember that that is changing your brain. that you're engaging in these processes of neuroplasticity, changing your chemistry, your brain structure, and your brain function kind of continually throughout that process. Dr.

Boyd, what are your parting words? >> There's a saying, and forgive me if this is a bit geeky, that I love in Latin. It's to me, and it means it is yours. So, it is up to you. And I think about it often for a couple of reasons. One, coincidentally, it's the motto of the university I work at, UBC, but two, I love this idea that it is up to us, and it feeds so nicely into this idea of neuroplasticity.

We've had a wonderful conversation and gone a lot of places, but I really want people to take away from it this, that your brain is shaped by the experiences around you. And it's up to you to choose wisely what those experiences are. What is it you want to engage in? What is it you want to learn? What is it you want to avoid because you know they're not healthy on your brain. Maybe that's social media. Maybe it's the influence of someone who's not positive in your life. So you have the opportunity to shape your brain by the experience that you provide to it. It's going to be hard. You're going to struggle. you're going to fail. And remember that all of those are incredibly good things as you're learning and you're changing your brain. So I think if you put all of that together, my idea for you would be you can build the brain you want to have.

>> Build the brain you want. >> Dr. Boyd, I loved talking to you. I loved learning. I loved hearing all about your research and how we can use experiences to shape our brain. I cannot wait to see how this ripples through the world and really empowers people as they share it with the people that they love. So, on behalf of the person who's listening and everyone in their life that they're going to share this remarkable episode with, I just want to say thank you.

>> Well, I want to thank you so much for having me. I'm clearly a bit obsessed. I'm so excited to get to share this information. >> Well, I'm thrilled to have you here and um you absolutely killed it. I'm so excited about this. Um and what I loved that Dr. Boyd just says is this sentence, it is yours. That you can take everything that she shared with you and taught you today and use it to shape your brain. And the way that you shape your brain shapes your entire experience of life. How cool is it that your brain can change and grow and learn new things all the way until the day you die. And now you know exactly what to do so that your brain will never be the same again.

It can be better and that'll make your life better. And in case nobody else tells you this, I wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And Dr. Boyd sure convinced me and I know she convinced you that the more you take care of your brain, the more you do hard things, the more you are committed to being a lifelong learner, the better you and your life get. So go do it. All righty. I'll see you in the very next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. All righty. And thank you for watching all the way to the end here on YouTube. I love being here with you.

Thank you for being a subscriber. It's the single best way you can say thank you to me and the team and all these extraordinary experts. And I know you want to watch another episode of the Mel Robbins Podcast. You're going to love this one. And I will welcome you in the moment you hit play.