Brain Power:How to Make Memories Stick

Today, we’ll dive into what makes certain memories stick better than others.

Dr. Wendy Suzuki is one of the world’s foremost brain experts, specializing in how we create and retain long-term memories. But when her own father began showing signs of dementia, she developed an entirely new and deeper appreciation of the brain’s power when facing age-related memory decline.

Growing up, Wendy’s family never expressed their love out loud. But one day as an adult, Wendy decided she wanted to change that. During one of her weekly phone calls to her parents, Wendy asked if they could begin saying “I love you.” Her parents liked the idea and decided to give it a try. The next week, Wendy feared her father would forget this new tradition due to his dementia, but he actually said “I love you” to Wendy first.

This is more than just a beautiful interaction between father and daughter. As Wendy says, “It actually illustrates something really important about memory and how it works. When we have an experience that creates a deep emotional reaction, like saying I love you for the first time, we say the experience createsemotional resonance. And when that happens, it’s more likely to stick in our minds. Emotion triggers our amygdala to tell our brains this is important.Keep it. Use it.”

Other factors are also known to help make memories sticky for us, like novelty.When something happens that is simply outside the norm, it has a tendency to stay with us.

Most of us build routines into our days—perhaps we take the same route to work every day. Or we stop at the same coffee shop every morning and order the same latte from the same barista. It may be hard to distinguish one day from any other until the one time we get to the register and realize the person in front of us paid for our coffee as a random act of kindness. Boom—memory formed and kept. That’s the power of novelty.

Repetition can be another powerful memory booster. The more we bring a memory back to mind, the stronger it can become. Repetition engages the neural networks related to our attention system, and we remember what we pay attention to.

Association is another key factor in memory formation and retention. If something we experience can be linked to a group of related or associated items already in our memory—especially if those are things we really value—then it can be easier for us to store them as lasting memories.

So, while there is no magic pill that will help you recall in vivid detail everything your mind takes in, emotional resonance, novelty, repetition, and association are four keys that help make a memory stick.

Tomorrow, we’ll learn more about the signs and effects of memory decline.

Brain Power:Understanding Dementia and Alzheimer’s

Today, we’ll examine the signs and effects of memory decline. Memory decline is a serious issue that will likely affect all of us in some way or another—whether our own memory begins to fade or our friends or loved ones suffer from diseases like Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. It’s important to understand that dementia and Alzheimer’s are not the same thing. Dementia is a term that describes a general decline in everyday living skills such as memory, planning, decision-making, and other thinking skills. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. 60 to 80 percent of people with dementia have Alzheimer’s, and it can be a devastating condition. Essentially, Alzheimer’s begins to form proteins called plaques and tangles in your brain. These plaques and tangles start and spread into the hippocampus first. Then over time, they spread to other areas of the brain, impairing many core brain functions. Because Alzheimer’s affects the hippocampus first, an early sign of Alzheimer’s includes difficulty remembering newly learned information—like the name of someone you just met or where you left your keys. As the disease progresses, it leads to increasingly severe symptoms and ultimately to death. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s. But there is evidence that practicing certain activities may help slow the progress of Alzheimer’s and stave off cognitive decline. Faced with her father’s dementia, Dr. Wendy Suzuki has seen first-hand the effects of memory loss. At first she was scared, but she’s started to develop a new perspective. She says:

The big lesson that I’ve learned is not to let the fear of the condition get in the way of enjoying what can be experienced today. I think I spent too much time worrying about if I was doing all that I could for Dad, especially because I am an expert in brain science. But I realized that I’m better off, and my dad is better off, if I just spend that time and energy talking and interacting with my dad. I do that as much as I possibly can these days and don’t worry so much about how things will progress. And that feels a lot better for both of us.

Thus far, we’ve spent a lot of time exploring how the brain works. But we’re more than our brains—we also have bodies connected to our brains, and what we do with our bodies can play a huge role in how our brains work. So for the remaining lessons, we’ll explore several ways to help cultivate our own mind-body connection—ways we can help increase brain function, improve our moods, and even help us manage stress. Tomorrow, we’ll study how aerobic exercise might improve our learning, memory, and cognitive abilities.

Brain Power:Six “Brain Hacks” to Enrich Your Brain

Brain power: How to improve your brain health

As you learned in the last lesson, our brains are constantly responding to how we interact with the world. If we want to give our brains the best chance to continue growing and forming new connections, we need to find ways to continually enrich our own worlds, stay active, meet new people, try new things, and always keep learning.

To help you enrich your brain, here are six simple “brain hacks,” most of which take less than four minutes a day. Each has the potential to enrich a different part of your brain in amazing ways.

1. Motor Cortex Brain Hack
Go to YouTube and watch a video to learn a new physical skill. Learn a new dance move, the perfect golf swing, how to juggle—anything that strikes your fancy. And then practice!

2. Taste Cortex Brain Hack
Try going out (or better yet, preparing) a cuisine you’ve never had. Korean, Laotian, Ethiopian—you name it. Take your taste buds (and taste cortex) on a cultural adventure.

Or for added fun, try eating a meal in complete darkness and see how the lack of visual input affects your sense of taste. You might be surprised.

3. Cognitive Brain Hack
Learn more about how the brain works and what you can do to make yours work better. Take Brain Power, a new course from Life Re-imagined, taught by Dr. Wendy Suzuki. It’s free. It’s fun. And it might just change your brain for the better. Sign up today.

4. Visual Cortex Brain Hack
Go to a local museum and pick a piece of artwork you’ve never seen before. Then sit quietly in front of it and let yourself get lost.

5. Auditory Cortex Brain Hack
Go to your preferred music streaming service and search music from a genre you’ve never listened to before. As you listen, reflect. What do you notice about the music? Do you like it and want to learn more? Do you dislike it? Why? Does the music bring back any memories?

6. Olfactory Cortex Brain Hack
Take a few minutes to sit and smell your meals before you eat them. If you have eggs and toast for breakfast, just let their smells waft into your nose before you eat. Breathe in the steam of your coffee before you drink. Learn to appreciate and describe the different smells of your food and you might learn to appreciate them even more.

Tomorrow, we’ll learn why certain memories stick better than others.

Brain Power:Disneyland for Rats

Brain power: How to improve your brain health: The understanding that the brain continues to change as we age is a relatively new concept in neuroscience. Not long ago, the prevailing wisdom was that our brains grew and formed new connections during childhood and adolescence, but once we reached adulthood, we were pretty much locked into the brains we had. All that changed, however, in the 1960s with the research of Marian Diamond out of UC Berkeley. Today, we’ll review and analyze the results of Diamond’s groundbreaking brain research. Diamond and her colleagues wanted to know what would happen to the brains of adult rats if they housed them in an “enriched environment.” Think of it as a sort of Disneyland for rats. Lots of fun rat toys to play with. Lots of space to run around. Lots of other rat buddies to talk to. It was a big old rat party. So Diamond and her colleagues put a set of rats in an enriched environment. And then they had a control set of rats without toys or rat buddies.

What they found was monumental. After a period of time, when they examined the rats, they discovered that the Disneyland rats actually had brains that were physically larger than the rats that had little enrichment and stimulation. The neural connections within the rats’ brains had grown and expanded, meaning their neurons could receive and process larger amounts of information. And not only that—these rats had more synaptic connections, more blood vessels (which means better access to oxygen and nutrients), and higher levels of good brain chemicals that trigger other physical benefits. Ultimately, what we’ve found since Diamond’s initial groundbreaking study is that brains, adult rat and adult human alike, are highly sensitive and reactive to all aspects of any given environment—physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive. Stimulate the brain with new things to do or new individuals to interact with and it reacts by creating new connections that cause it to physically expand. But deprive our brains of new stimulations or bore it with doing the same thing day in and day out and our connections could wither away, shrinking our brains. Tomorrow, we’ll explore six “brain hacks” to enrich your brain.

Brain power: How to improve your brain health

The Constantly Changing Brain

Today, we are going to learn an important concept in the world of neuroscience called brain plasticity. This doesn’t mean your brain is made of plastic. It means your brain has the ability to change as the result of experiences.How does that work? Well, to understand it, we need to learn about neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapses.

If we were to look inside our brains and zoom in close, we’d see that the brain is full of little specialized cells called neurons. Using dendrites and axons, neurons make synaptic connections to other neurons to pass messages throughout the brain—messages like “It’s cold,” “That dog looks scary,” or “Do I smell tacos?”

When we say the brain is able to change itself, what we mean is that under the right conditions, neurons can grow and expand, and in doing so can actually receive and process larger amounts of information. And the more effective your neurons are at processing information, the more effective your brain can be altogether.

Our brains are highly sensitive and react to all aspects of any given environment—physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive. Stimulate the brain with new activities or new individuals to interact with and it reacts by creating new connections that cause it to actually expand in size. But deprive your brain of new stimulations or bore it by doing the same thing day in and day out and your connections could wither away. Your brain will actually shrink!

The key point is that your brain is constantly responding to how you interact with the world. If you want to give your brain the best chance to continue growing and forming new connections, you need to find ways to continually enrich your own world, stay active, meet new people, try new things, and always keep learning.

In upcoming lessons, we’ll show you ways you can do just that. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss how enriched environments affect your brain.

Brain Power: How to improve your brain health Episode #1 of 3rd post.

STEP_BY_STEP EXPLANATION OF BRAIN

Brain Anatomy 101:

Our brains do so much—they determine how we see, feel, taste, smell, and hear. They define our personalities. And they allow us to go from crying to laughing—sometimes in the blink of an eye. In this course, we’re going to learn about the brain and how it works. And we’ll explore several strategies to make our brains more efficient and more effective. Let’s start by taking a quick tour of the brain. We’ll highlight each brain section and discuss its primary function. That said, it’s important to realize that the brain is interconnected with a lot of shared responsibility across the different sections.

To begin, the brain is divided into two hemispheres: the left and the right.The right controls the left side of our body, and the left controls the right. It’s an oversimplification to say the right side controls creativity and the left side controls logical thought, but the different sides do manage different tasks for us.

At the front of the brain is the aptly named frontal lobe. It houses theprefrontal cortex and the primary motor cortex. The prefrontal cortex supports planning, attention, decision-making, and managing social behavior. The primary motor cortex is responsible for body movement.

Next is the parietal lobe, where we process sensory information like taste, temperature, and touch.

Just below the parietal lobe at the back of the head, we’ve got the occipital lobe. This part of the brain allows us to see; damage here can cause blindness.

Below the occipital lobe is a cauliflower-shaped structure called thecerebellum. It’s responsible for fine motor skills like writing, sewing, or hitting a ball.

On the bottom of the brain, we find the medulla oblongata. It’s part of the brain stem and connects the upper brain to the spinal cord. It’s responsible for crucial non-voluntary functions like breathing and blood circulation.

On the side of the brain, we have the temporal lobe. Fun fact: the word “temporal” means “of or relating to the passage of time.” And this part of your head is where your own personal passage of time shows first—it’s where your first gray hairs start sprouting. The upper part of the temporal lobe is primarily responsible for hearing and helping us differentiate between sounds. The lower portion helps us discern complex visual objects like faces. Damage to this part of the brain can result in a condition known as prosopagnosia, or as it is more commonly called, face blindness.

Finally, located deep inside the temporal lobe are a few critical structures: thehippocampus and the amygdala. The hippocampus is essential for forming new memories. And when memory decline starts, as it does with conditions like Alzheimer’s, the problem begins in and around the hippocampus. In front of the hippocampus is the amygdala, which helps us process emotions like anger, sadness, and especially fear. It also helps store emotional memories for recall. That was a pretty basic tour of the brain, but this is important information to understand as we move forward. Tomorrow, we’ll learn about brain plasticity.

Recommended video “Connecting Mind and Body” by Dr. Wendy Suzuki Recommended book by Highbrow “The Brain: The Story of You” by David Eagleman

Simply Putting It All Together #10 of 2nd post

UPDATED LIST OF HEALTH TRACKERS

Get your caps and gowns ready: you are about to graduate from this course! In the last nine lessons, you learned all the tools you need to set and achieve your fitness goals: from understanding how to shape a workout to what factors increase the chances of long-term success. I feel confident that you have what it takes to develop your plan and begin working toward your goals. This final lesson will guide you through each step of the process to ensure you have a foolproof plan to set and achieve your goals. If you haven’t already written down your goals and plan, this is a great time to pull out a piece of paper or digital note-taking app! Step 1: Determine which general type of goal you would like to accomplish, so you have a general idea of how to shape your workouts and diet: Losing weight Building endurance Building strength Gaining weight Step 2: Define a more specific goal. What exactly would you like to see? How will you know when you have achieved your goal? Make sure this goal follows the SMART acronym, so it is specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, and has a timeframe. This will ensure that you have every detail covered! Step 3: Design your workouts to reflect your specific goal. If you need reminders or suggestions on where to start, check out Lessons #2-5, which go over some ideas for building workouts specific to your general goal. Step 4: Determine how you will track your progress, and then begin tracking your progress on a weekly or monthly basis. Make sure the measurement you take is directly relevant to your goal. Step 5: Develop your diet guidelines that are shaped toward your fitness goal. Adjust your daily calories to ensure that you're not eating too little or too much. You may also want to find your ideal macro ratios that can put you on the fast track to your specific goal. Tracking your food is recommended, so you can see if you are on target for your caloric and macro needs. Step 6: Find a supportive community or friend to partner with. Research has shown that having support while working toward a goal nearly doubles the chances of being effective in achieving that goal! Step 7: After the first week, measure your progress, and celebrate your victories! If needed, make adjustments to your training workouts, diet, or level of support. Congratulations on finishing this course! I am excited that you now have all the tools needed to set and achieve your fitness goals. If you want additional tools to assist with a weight loss goal, check out my other course on 1st post:Weight Management. You’ll love it! Cheers to your Health, Aimee Frazier

If you would like personalized support toward your health and fitness goals, we can work together one on one! As a health coach, I partner with people to create realistic, long-term lifestyle changes through behavior change, fitness plans, and research-proven strategies.

Maintaining Your Goal Long Term #9 of 2nd post

WHAT ARE ROLES OF PSYCHOLOGY IN HEALTH?

Scientists and psychologists have studied what makes people stick with a behavior long term, and there are several factors. Behavior change is woven into the human mind and body in complex ways. Many different factors determine if a person will be able to maintain their changes long term: from environment, to temptation, support, positive rewards, and the ability to plan ahead. In this lesson, you will learn what behavioral scientists have found to be the most effective tools for maintaining a goal so you can feel confident that your achievements aren’t temporary.

The Transtheoretical Model

The Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change was a scale designed by experts from different fields who came together with the belief that behavior change is holistic and needs to address the physical, psychological, and environmental components that factor into making lasting behavior changes. The model shows the stages of progression of making a behavior change—in this case, achieving your fitness goals:

• Precontemplation
• Contemplation
• Preparation
• Action
• Maintenance
• Relapse

For the sake of this specific course, we will focus just on the last three stages: action, maintenance, and relapse.

Action

In this stage, a person is actively making behavior changes toward their goal. This stage can last as long as a person is working toward their goal, which in some cases, can be months or years. People in this stage have to put effort into sticking with their goals and new lifestyle.

So, if you want to achieve your goal, researchers say that you’ll need to focus on doing these things:

• Replace old, unhealthy habits for new, healthy ones.
• See the benefits of your new lifestyle.
• Master techniques to maintain the new lifestyle.
• Use rewards for progress, in order to be self-motivated.
• Learn to recognize and avoid temptation.

Maintenance

The Maintenance stage takes place once a person has maintained their behavior change (or goal) for at least six months. Many of their habits are now healthy. They have a full understanding of the benefits of their change. The biggest risk now is relapse: falling back into unhealthy habits. They must be aware of stressful situations that could cause them to slip. In this stage, it’s helpful to have support from others and stay highly motivated via groups, a doctor, books, or a health coach.

So, if you want to stick with your new lifestyle changes, you’ll need to do these things:

• Be aware of stressful situations that could cause old, unhealthy patterns to surface.
• Gain support in order to stay highly motivated.

Relapse

Relapse happens when an individual slips back into unhealthy habits. Stress, a lack of support, or too much temptation can all cause a relapse. Relapse is common for everyone, even the most disciplined people.

If a relapse happens, it’s helpful to jump back into the appropriate stage and not dwell on the feelings of disappointment or embarrassment. Take a few minutes to think about what you’d like to do differently—then jump right back in where you left off!

Summary

To summarize, in order to maintain your goal long term, you will need to progress through the stages of behavior change until you have reached the maintenance stage. Once there, you’ll need to focus on gaining support and maintaining healthy habits. If you relapse into former, unhealthy habits, you can jump right back in where you left off. In the next episode, we will bring together all the tools from Lessons 1-9, so you have a step-by-step guide to setting and achieving your goals.

TRULY HELPFUL: Supportive Communities #8 of 2nd post

Fitness goals are hard to achieve—even for athletes, personal trainers, and bodybuilders! It may look like they have it all figured out, but they don’t. Their successes are often due to their support teams: coaches, communities, and friends. It is absolutely possible for anyone and everyone to achieve their goals if given the right support and tools. In this lesson, you will learn the value of having a support system so you can stick with your goals long term.

A study done by psychology professor Dr. Matthews at the Dominican University of California measured the likelihood of successfully achieving a goal with and without the support of a friend. Her research found that people who updated their friend on their progress once a week had a 70% chance of achieving their goal! People who kept their goal to themselves only reached their goal 35% of the time. If you’re able to gain the support you need and have a motivational, engaging community, you are more likely to achieve and maintain your goal over time.

Supportive communities can take many forms, from online lifestyle applications to in-person workout groups. Let's learn what types of supportive fitness communities exist and how you can begin to lay out your support network to increase your opportunity for success.

Online Fitness Community

PumpUp is a fitness-based virtual community whose slogan is “become the best version of you.” This free mobile application is an inspiring community of individuals who encourage each other in their fitness journeys through sharing and commenting on each other’s goals, progress photos, and status updates. Remember those progress photos that you took from the “Tracking Progress” episode? This is a great place to share them and be surrounded by encouraging, supportive, real-life people. The application also offers an exercise builder, where a user can select their target muscles, available equipment, level of difficulty, and time they have to workout. The application uses those details to build a workout to the user’s specifications. For those who want an extra level of support, there is an option to hire a certified coach for a small monthly fee.

Other online support communities include:

• Bodybuilding.com
• Lose It!
• MyFitnessPal

In-Person Fitness Communities

Many gyms have various clubs and fitness classes and groups that offer users a supportive community. If you prefer to see your support team in person on a frequent basis, getting connected with a fitness community at a local gym or community center may be a good place to start! Many gyms also offer customized personal training.

The Support of a Friend

If you’re fortunate to have a friend or family member who is supportive of your health, let them in on your journey. Tell them your goals and ask for their support. Most people will be excited and offer to check in with you to see how your progress is going.

Summary

Having support is extremely helpful when working toward a health-and-fitness goal. Research has proven that people are more likely to achieve their goals when they have the support of other people. In our last lesson, we will review all of what we have learned, and put together each step of the process of setting and achieving fitness goals!

Homework: Find a supportive community or friend, and tell them about your goal.

Cheers to your health.