Love coffee? You might be in luck. Although the fresh, aromatic bean has long been lauded for its many uses and benefits, it can be difficult to see a real use for coffee outside of its primary function -- keeping us awake when we don't have the energy to ourselves.

However, if you're an avid drinker, you might have a better understanding of the many other benefits of a cup of coffee, such as its ability to reduce heart disease, improve digestion, or even serve as a diuretic. And, in a recent study conducted by Indiana University, 24 compounds were revealed to be able to reduce the impact of harmful proteins in the brain that cause dementia.

Among these compounds, caffeine was confirmed to work alongside a powerful enzyme in the brain that allowed for the creation of a "chemical blockade against the debilitating effects of neurodegenerative diseases," said Hui-Chen Lu, a leading researcher for the study.

One of the causes of Alzheimer's is through the mis-folding -- or, for those unfamiliar with cellular processes, the improper formation -- of proteins. The targeted enzyme, NMNAT2 in this case, protects neurons from stress -- which can cause degradation as well as protein mis-folding -- thus directly combating one of the causes of neurodegenerative disease.

To determine which compounds best assisted the function of NMNAT2, more than 1,200 compounds were analyzed. And only after a large number of rigorous tests was it found that 24 compounds--including caffeine--were able to combat the negative protein mis-folding through NMNAT2 solidification. Another relatively common compound easily accessible by the general public was retinoic acid, a chemical associated with antiaging effects and cellular regeneration.

Thus, it turns out that, if you're a big caffeine addict, it might actually be able to help you more than hurt you -- provided that you're consuming responsibly, of course. If you're looking for ways to reduce your chances of harmful neurodegenerative pathways in the brain, it might be worth trying out things you normally wouldn't to better prepare your body for the inevitable long term.

Original post:
Neuroscience: Coffee Can Protect Your Brain Against Alzheimer's - Inc.com

Have you ever had a difficult executive decision to make? This is the kind of decision where the best options arent obvious, the ethics arent clear, and the consequences could affect hundreds of people or more. How do you figure out the right thing to do? More importantly, how do you develop the habit of making better decisions, time and time again, even in difficult and uncertain circumstances?

Neuroscientists and psychologists are beginning to learn what happens at moments of choice inside the human mind (the locus of mental activity) and the brain (the physical organ associated with that activity). If you understand these dynamics and how they affect you and those around you, you can set a course toward more effective patterns of thinking and action. You can replicate those beneficial patterns, at a larger scale, in your organization. Over time, this practice can help you take on a quality of strategic leadership: inspiring others, helping organizations transcend their limits, and navigating enterprises toward lofty, beneficial goals.

For example, consider the case of a human resources director for a regional professional services organization, a linchpin in its local economy. (We have permission to tell this story, but we cannot use the real name of the company or the individual.) Natalie, who is in her 40s, reported directly to the CEO. When the firm hit a long stretch of dwindling revenues, Natalie had ideas for turning things around, but she wasnt included in strategic conversations. Instead, all personnel issues including sexual harassment cases, bullying claims, and layoffs were delegated to her. One year, she had to move the firms financial accounting staff offshore. About 30 local people lost their jobs. It was a painful but necessary decision that allowed the firm to survive.

Neuroscientists are learning how executive decision-makers can use their minds to transform organizations.

Stress took its toll. For years, Natalie worked 70 hours or more per week. Her marriage was on the rocks, she came to work anxious, and she lost the ability to hide her chronic irritation. As a result, her performance reviews slipped. She felt herself panicking: If this goes on much longer, I wont be able to cope, and Im going to lose my job.

Fortunately for Natalie, there were people, including an executive coach, who helped her see what was happening. First haltingly, and then with growing enthusiasm, she adopted a regimen of practices that included mindfulness. Every day, soon after arising, she spends a half hour alone, focusing her attention on the deceptive brain messages that underlie her stress. For instance, she knows she tends to see everyone but herself as prone to error. Most people are screw-ups, and need to be tightly managed. She has also felt at times that the firms leaders dont respect her. Im just the head of HR, and the real work happens in sales and finance. She used to assume these were accurate statements of reality; now, she has relabeled them simply as brain messages, which she can observe dispassionately as they rise into her awareness.

As she reflects, she reframes these messages, choosing alternative ways of looking at her situation. These dont come out of thin air; she practices thinking through the firms problems sometimes in areas she knows well, such as recruiting and training, but also in less familiar domains, such as mergers and growth and proposing strategic approaches. She refocuses her attention on these alternatives, returning again and again, for example, to ways in which she could make a valuable contribution. Before any major meeting, she thinks about how the various leaders of the company might respond to the points she will make. As she makes critical decisions, she reminds herself to pay attention to the way others respond and follow up. In all this, she calls upon a construct that she has developed in her mind: a Wise Advocate, like a disinterested observer whom she can consult for guidance and perspective.

Natalie began this discipline around 2013 and it gradually affected the way she spoke and the things she said. She is now regularly invited into conversations about strategy. When there is a possible crisis, people turn to her first, as if she were a Wise Advocate for the larger enterprise. The companys prospects have turned around in part because of opportunities she has pointed out and instead of laying people off, shes now recruiting. She has also reduced the amount of oversight and number of approvals in the HR function; she no longer has to work 70 hours per week.

Natalie made a deliberate transition, from a harassed functionary bent on pleasing her bosses to an influential leader.

You might think this is just standard good management practice, nothing special. And you may well be right. But it was beyond Natalies skill four years ago. She made a deliberate transition, from a harassed functionary bent on pleasing her bosses to an influential leader with strategic perspective. The potential for this change was there all along, but nothing external no incentives, rewards, threats, or burning platformstyle pressure could force her into it. The leverage came from transforming her thoughts. By refocusing her attention, she became the kind of leader needed in that company at that time.

The shift that Natalie made was conscious, pragmatic, and replicable; anyone reading this can make it too. Her story exemplifies a hypothesis about the way people become effective leaders of large organizations, especially at times of turmoil and change. This hypothesis suggests that better, more strategic leadership can be developed by combining two often-misunderstood cognitive habits: mindfulness (clear-minded awareness of ones own mental activity) and mentalizing (paying close attention to what other people are thinking and are likely to do next). For all its complexity, the wise leadership hypothesis, as we sometimes call it, can be boiled down to one core principle: The focus of your attention in critical moments of choice can build your capacity to be an effective leader.

In most business decisions, you are likely to focus your attention in one of two basic ways. Exhibit 1 shows them in schematic form. We call one pattern of mental activity the Low Road, because it favors expedient actions aimed at giving you what you want and giving others what they want, as rapidly and efficiently as possible. The other pattern, the High Road, often manifests itself as the mental construct we call the Wise Advocate: a voice within the mind, making the case for fundamental solutions with longer-term and broader benefits. The Low Road is tactical; the High Road is strategic.

As it happens, these two patterns of mental activity are associated with two aspects of the prefrontal cortex dorsal (higher) for the High Road and ventral (lower) for the Low Road. When people hold their heads upright, the dorsal area sits above the ventral area in the brain. This is one reason that the names High Road and Low Road seem apt to us. Because they link mental activity and brain circuits, both the High Road and the Low Road are habit forming. If the wise leadership hypothesis is true (and it is consistent with current knowledge about neuroscience, psychology, organizational research, and ethics), then the relationship between them illuminates the source of strategic leadership.

The interaction between mind and brain is central to this hypothesis. When experimental subjects are encouraged to pay attention in particular ways, certain areas of the brain demonstrate observable activation, often in the form of blood flowing to those parts of the brain. Thus, for example, when people are shown a frightening picture, the amygdala is activated in a way that is made visible by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. This activation is physical and passive. People do not consciously choose the emotions they experience and the activations that arise in the brain.

The catalysts for strategic leadership are two often-misunderstood habits: mindfulness and mentalizing.

But brain activity is not the same as mental experience. Mental activity, although often associated with a physical circuit in the brain, also has a distinct existence. Evidence for this includes the fact that when people experience brain damage and receive training intended to refocus the injured persons attention, the functions of those damaged areas can relocate to other parts of the brain. Further evidence comes from the fact that solutions to mental problems, such as addiction, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, often elude or resist purely physical ways of addressing them. In addition, the mind is active in a way that the brain is not. You can choose where to focus your attention, and your choices, made in the mind, will eventually affect the physical makeup of your brain. This phenomenon is called self-directed neuroplasticity.

Canadian scientist Donald Hebb discovered one of the core principles of neuroplasticity in the 1950s. He summarized his findings with a phrase now known as Hebbs law: Neurons that fire together wire together. In other words, parts of the brain that are continually activated together will physically associate with one another in the future. The more frequently a pattern of mental activity occurs in your mind, the more entrenched the associated neural pathway becomes in your brain, and the easier it becomes to follow that same pathway in the future in fact, it can become totally automatic.

This process is loosely analogous to the way a powerful search engine works. When you search Google, for example, for a particular term or phrase, the software takes note. It also tracks the results that you click on and records your selection of the items presented to you. The next time you use the Google search engine, it will feature more prominently the terms and results that you chose before, because it is designed with the assumption that this is closer to what you want. You get more of what youve already looked for; the results in your future echo the choices of your past.

In a somewhat similar way, your brain circuits are strengthened by the choices you make about where and how to focus your attention. Thats how addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder, among many other human frailties, gain much of their power. But it is also possible to consciously use self-directed neuroplasticity to train your brain toward more constructive ends, and toward a stronger leadership role. At first, the Low Road is more comfortable; the High Road is indeed a road less traveled. But as you learn to make choices that favor the High Road in your mind, those choices strengthen the related circuits in your brain. This makes it easier to stay on the High Road, and gives you greater facility and sophistication for leading others.

Life today is a constant barrage of challenges. We have promises to fulfill, problems to solve, tests to pass, and situations to manage. The Low Road is the pattern of mental activity, and the related brain circuits, involved in meeting these challenges in an expedient way. When you make deals, design rewards and incentives, or think about satisfying your needs or the needs of others in your organization, you are probably on the Low Road. This activity often elicits powerful emotions, such as desire, anxiety, fear, frustration, elation, and relief. In everyday workplace life, most of us occupy the Low Road most of the time.

The Low Road connects three major functions of the brain. We call the first the Reactive Self-Referencing Center; it is associated with the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). This center is spontaneously activated when there are thought processes or sensory stimuli perceived as primarily related to the self. Low Road activity is also known as subjective valuation: It is concerned with what is valuable and relevant. Whats in it for me? How much is it worth? How might we close the deal? What might others want? Though powerfully related to incentives of various kinds, these are not purely selfish concerns; for example, the Low Road is involved when you observe others being rewarded.

It is important to note that the Reactive Self-Referencing Center is just half of a larger system called the Self-Referencing Center (associated with the entire medial prefrontal cortex). As well see, the other half (the Deliberative Self-Referencing Center) is a key element of the High Road. The overall Self-Referencing Center is involved in many aspects of your personality and identity, especially in the way you perceive yourself and relate to others. It correlates with your inner monologue: the voice inside your mind that thinks about people, articulates your hopes and fears, daydreams about the future, and interprets experience. When youre on the Low Road, this inner monologue will be oriented to yourself; as well see later, its different on the High Road, which is much less prone to subjective valuation.

The second function of the Low Road is the Warning Center. It is associated with three parts of the brain: the amygdala, insula, and orbital frontal cortex. This center generates feelings of fear, gut-level responses, and the sense that something is worth pursuing or avoiding. Anxious feelings of impending danger (especially those related to the experience of past threats) can activate this center with such intensity that they override all other thinking and response. Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman calls that phenomenon the amygdala hijack. (As well see, the Warning Center is also associated with the High Road.)

The third major brain function on the Low Road is the Habit Center. This function, typically associated with the basal ganglia (which are located deep within the base of the brain), manifested itself early in animal evolution. (It is sometimes called the lizard brain.) The Habit Center manages automatic thoughts and actions basic behaviors that dont generally require conscious attention because they have become automatic through repetition. These are actions such as walking up stairs, locking the door, brushing your teeth, and steering your car. Making use of this center is the subject of Charles Duhiggs bestsellerThe Power of Habit (Random House, 2012).

Some gifted and charismatic, albeit narcissistic, leaders are extremely skilled at traveling the Low Road. They can read a room and give the people what they want, powerfully and decisively, and they thus come across as masterful competitors. Former GE CEO Jack Welch titled one of his books Straight from the Gut, a reference to the power of signals from this circuit. But though they tend to feel true, these signals arent necessarily accurate. Deceptive brain messages frequently arise from the Low Road, ranging from all-or-nothing thinking (Youre either a winner or a loser in this company) to complacency (Our big customers have nowhere else to go). Natalies chronic worries (I will never be taken seriously as a leader of this enterprise) were deceptive Low Road messages. So are many other messages of expedience, including rationalizations for crossing an ethical line (No one will notice if we manipulate these numbers).

Some gifted and charismatic leaders are extremely skilled at traveling the Low Road.

The Low Road is familiar and emotionally powerful in business because it has real value there. What would consumers pay for our product? What bonus will our employees accept? What does my boss want, right now? What must I produce by next quarter? How should we price our stock? Questions like these trigger the Low Road, and your career may prosper if you answer them shrewdly. But business leaders who spend most of their time on the Low Road are unlikely to break free of the conventional wisdom of their industry. Strategic insights considerations of the purpose of the enterprise, and the long-term value it brings to the world are more likely to emerge when you travel the High Road.

The 18th-century economic philosopher Adam Smith, best known for his foundational book The Wealth of Nations, spent his last two decades considering the problem of virtue in capitalism. The vitality of the industrializing world was based on the good faith of energetic, creative people, acting individually. But no human society had ever resisted the temptations of corruption and exploitation. How would capitalism survive? Smith said that the two obvious means, legal regulations and community censure, were not completely adequate, because they were often ill-placed, bore enormous costs, reduced productivity, and diminished entrepreneurial vitality. Yet what else could hold the inevitable waves of robber barons in check?

Strategic insights are more likely to emerge when you travel the High Road.

Smiths other famous work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, first published in 1759 and significantly expanded in 1790, proposes a solution principally based on what he called the impartial spectator. Our Wise Advocate closely resembles his solution. That voice within the mind is oriented not just to your desires, needs, and success, but to the overall long-term value of the entire system. It has the dispassionate perspective of a clear-minded observer, helping you see yourself and your actions as others might see them. It may not be obvious, but it is always there, an inner source of guidance ready to be cultivated; when you act with it in mind, you stop looking for the most expedient outcome or trying to make everyone happy. You dont necessarily want to make anyone unhappy in the short run, but if that is a requisite part of a longer-term, broader-based positive outcome, you are willing to consider it.

This type of mental activity is typical of the High Road. Like its Low Road counterpart, the High Road connects three major centers of the mind and their associated brain regions. The first is the same Warning Center function that links to the Low Road, associated with the amygdala, insula, and orbital frontal cortex. Thus, the High Road also channels feelings of urgency.

Second, instead of the Reactive Self-Referencing Center, the High Road connects to a function we call the Deliberative Self-Referencing Center. This is associated with the dorsal (upper) medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), a brain region above the vmPFC. The Deliberative Self-Referencing Center is activated by consideration of what others are thinking and evaluations of what future actions they might perform. What is he thinking? What is she thinking? What will they do next? are High Road questions.

The third function on the High Road is the Executive Center, associated with the lateral prefrontal cortex. Working memory, the ability to keep information accessible so your conscious attention can work with it, is located in this center. When you reflect on your most meaningful aspirations, and plan how you might bring those changes to pass, you generate activity in the Executive Center. This center is also associated with cognitive flexibility: the ability to see a situation from multiple perspectives and act according to the potential and subtle connections among them. Finally, this part of the brain is the home of self-regulation, or the inhibition of habitual and impulsive behaviors. Columbia University research psychologist Walter Mischel, the creator of the marshmallow test experiments, which linked childrens ability to self-regulate with success later in life, credits the Executive Center as the source of this all-important attribute.

Brain research on the High Road is still evolving, and its implications are still being explored. It seems likely that the High Road is often triggered when one is thinking about people in abstract terms, studying them as an anthropologist might. You dont have to be entirely accurate in your perception of others thoughts, motives, and future actions; just inquiring about and reflecting on what theyre thinking or what theyre likely to do will trigger the High Road. If the Low Road is concerned with subjective value, the High Road is concerned with genuine worth: whether something is important enough to deserve close, sustained attention.

By linking it to the High Road, our hypothesis suggests that the Wise Advocate is not just a metaphor. It represents a real, recurring mental phenomenon. When you repeatedly pay attention to it, because of self-directed neuroplasticity, you will tend to rewire the pathways of your brain in ways that significantly enhance your perspective. The most accomplished leaders, from the earliest human history up to today, have appeared to understand this. By managing their attention to achieve more significant goals, they move their mind more frequently onto the High Road, and they strengthen their Wise Advocate accordingly.

The Low Road and the High Road are both oriented toward achieving goals; theyre both somewhat concerned with how you make your way in the world. They can sometimes be hard to tell apart. And yet the switch between them can make all the difference to your ability and success as a leader.

How, then, can you develop that capacity in yourself and in your organization? Two mental activities seem to evoke the High Road. The first practice, mentalizing, has also been called theory of mind. When you mentalize, instead of focusing on the desires and problems around you (and whether you need to intervene), you consider people more dispassionately, trying to figure them out, as if they were characters in a novel or film. What makes them tick? What will they do next? What are they really thinking about, and why?

Social neuroscientists have studied mentalizing in some detail. In typical experiments, people are asked to look at groups of pictures illustrating simple stories, or to read passages describing simple situations. Then they are asked to explain the behaviors in the pictures and stories. This exercise, designed to trigger mentalizing, consistently activates the Deliberative Self-Referencing Center, which is part of the High Road circuit. Some people have an easier time with it than others; people who are skilled at it develop a more nuanced, sophisticated understanding of other people that helps them manage others effectively. Emily Falk of the University of Pennsylvania has also found that activity in brain areas associated with mentalizing is correlated with ideas that become influential.

Considering the benefits of mentalizing, youd expect executives to eagerly pursue it as a path toward leadership. But they often dont. The people who mentalize most frequently those who are, as one study puts it, more likely to engage in social cognitive processes that aid in understanding how others think, feel, and behave tend to perceive themselves as low-status individuals. For example, people who have a job that requires serving others (such as assistants, caretakers, and salespeople) tend to consistently mentalize about higher-status individuals. One could argue that some jobs are considered low-status precisely because the job holders are expected to mentalize about their customers, investors, bosses, and everyone else, while no one pays attention to them. It takes mental strength to be a good mentalizer. Its hard work, so its easy to see why some people stop doing it when they rise to a position of influence. They feel theyve paid their dues.

And yet for aspiring leaders, mentalizing becomes even more important as they rise to higher levels of responsibility and authority. Some of the most effective senior executives have a well-developed ability to mentalize. They can articulate what other people are thinking, what those people intend to do next, and why it is important. They give the impression of genuinely caring about what other people think, because of the intensive, high-voltage way they pay attention in conversation.

But that is not enough, in itself, for consistent High Road leadership. The other necessary practice is mindfulness. Millions of people have been exposed to this basic practice in the context of meditation. You sit in a comfortable but upright position, your spine straight, perhaps with your legs folded. You draw your attention to some regular aspect of your experience in one common and extremely beneficial form, you focus your attention on your breathing. Each time your mind wanders on a tangent, you catch yourself, and bring your attention back to your breath. As you do this regularly, you develop new cognitive skills. For example, you gain an enhanced awareness of thoughts moving through your mind. This practice also induces self-directed neuroplasticity; it changes your brain.

Wendy Hasenkamp, currently the science director of the Mind & Life Institute in Massachusetts, conducted research at Emory University in which this basic breathing exercise brought people to the Executive Center function and thus to the High Road (specifically, in the brain, to the dorsal part of the lateral prefrontal cortex). But when their minds inevitably wandered when they started thinking about the days activities, obligations, hopes, fears, or anything other than their breathing the brain scans showed activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, associated with the Low Road. When they returned to focus on their breathing, as meditators are trained to do, their mental activity returned to the High Road (see Exhibit 2).

Hasenkamps research on focused attention, and other research on mindfulness, has helped explain why these practices are linked with stress reduction, and with increased emotional intelligence. In general, mindfulness appears to enhance the connection between the Executive Center and the emotion-based Warning Center, to enhance peoples ability to disengage from Low Road thoughts and feelings, and thus to strengthen the High Road.

When you combine mindfulness and mentalizing to the extent that both practices become routine for you you begin to mentalize about yourself. What am I likely to do? What am I really about? Why am I thinking this way? These questions, strongly linked to the High Road, may be closer to authentic leadership than questions typically associated with authority: How will we fix this problem? Who can we bring on board with us? How will I triumph?

As a leader, you may already consult your Wise Advocate quite a bit. But unless youre quite unusual, the Low Road in your brain is much more active than it needs to be. The more you use your mind to shift activity from this circuit to the High Road circuit, the more effective you will be as a leader. You may, like Natalie, feel called upon to play a more visible leadership role within your organization. And with application of the principles described here, you can provide the same kind of guidance for the enterprise that the Wise Advocate provides for your own mind.

Invoking the High Road is not a miracle practice. It is not a sure path to wealth, success, promotion, or any other material or social benefit. But it seems to be a reliable process for building your leadership acumen. You may experience this as the development of an inner dialogue that makes you more aware of beneficial opportunities, more likely to act on them, and more able to do so. With regular practice, it can become habitual for you to step back and look at any situation in your organization or in your personal life with a Wise Advocate frame of mind.

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The Neuroscience of Strategic Leadership - strategy+business (registration) (blog)

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The modern world seems to be designed to increase stress, and I'm starting to wonder if worrying will soon be an Olympic sport.

You may have your own ways of coping with stress. Problem is, research says they probably don't work.

From The Willpower Instinct:

The APA's national survey on stress found that the most commonly used strategies were also rated as highly ineffective by the same people who reported using them. For example, only 16 percent of people who eat to reduce stress report that it actually helps them. Another study found that women are most likely to eat chocolate when they are feeling anxious or depressed, but the only reliable change in mood they experience from their drug of choice is an increase in guilt. [The Willpower Instinct]

So let's go after this stress thing where it lives: your brain. There are some great methods to train your mind to reduce stress.

But they take work. And right now you're too stressed out for any of that. (Or maybe you're just lazy and impatient. Hey, I don't judge.)

So we need some stuff that's diabolically easy and backed by neuroscience research but let's keep the emphasis on diabolical. If your brain won't play fair, neither will we. So what do we need here?

Old-fashioned treachery. Of the neuroscience variety. Time to do an end run around your brain's stress response and exploit physiology to trick it into calming down. Let's play neurological hardball.

1. Clench your facial muscles and relax them

Communication between your brain and your body is a two-way street. There's a feedback loop. So if you can't get your brain to make your body calm down, you can use your body to make your brain calm down.

Your grey matter gets stressed and your muscles tighten up. Then your tense muscles send a signal back to your brain, confirming you're stressed. We gotta break the loop.

Clench your facial muscles and then relax them. Now your body is sending a signal to your brain saying, "We're not stressed anymore. You shouldn't be either."

From The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time:

To remind your brain to relax your muscles, sometimes it's helpful to clench them first. Take a deep breath in and then flex a tight muscle for a few seconds. After holding for a few seconds, exhale with a sigh and relax. The most important muscles to relax are your facial muscles, since those have the largest effect on emotion, but relaxing your hands, butt, and stomach are also important. [The Upward Spiral]

If your partner is around and you don't feel like making a face that looks like you're constipated, have them give you a massage. That works too.

(To learn the four rituals neuroscience says will make you happier, click here.)

So funny faces can beat stress. Or maybe you're getting a massage instead. That's even better. You're less stressed and you're bonding with your partner.

But what if facial scrunching doesn't work? What other dirty physiological tricks do we have?

2. Take slow, deep breaths

The vagus nerve is one of the key emotional highways in your body. It sends signals down to your heart and up to your brain playing a critical role in regulating the fight-or-flight system.

Directly stimulating the vagus nerve can fix all your issues. Only problem is that would require a scalpel and a lot of medical school loans. So we'll stay focused on treachery.

How you breathe can hijack the way the vagus nerve works. In fact, it's one of the fastest ways to change your emotional state.

From The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time:

Breathing affects the brain through signals carried by the vagus nerve. Not only does the vagus nerve send signals down to the heart, as mentioned earlier, but it also carries signals up into the brain stem. Vagus nerve signaling is important in activating circuits for resting and relaxation, known as the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic system is the opposite of the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the fight-or-flight instinct. Slow breathing increases activity in the vagus nerve and pushes the brain toward parasympathetic activity. So slow, deep breathing calms you down. [The Upward Spiral]

So how do you do it right?

Breathe in slowly through your nose while counting slowly to six (or even eight). Pause for a couple seconds at the top of your inhalation and then exhale slowly through your nose for the same count. [The Upward Spiral]

And this is no small effect. After the U.S. military taught Navy SEAL recruits a few psychological tricks (including proper breathing) passing rates jumped from 25 percent to 33 percent.

An interesting side note: Do the opposite and you'll get the opposite effect. Need more energy? Breathe quickly.

By contrast, rapid breathing deactivates the parasympathetic nervous system and activates the sympathetic nervous system. When you are anxious, excited, or scared, you breathe quickly. But it's also true that if you breathe quickly, you're more likely to feel those feelings. Fast breathing can make you more nervous but also more excited. Sometimes that's a good thing. Maybe you need a bit more energy to make it to the gym (or to do anything at all). Try quick, shallow breaths for 20 to 30 seconds. [The Upward Spiral]

(For more from neuroscientist Alex Korb on how to make your brain happy, click here.)

What if this doesn't work? You're huffing and puffing and you're still worried your house is going to get blown down. Head to the sink, my friend...

3. Splash your face with cold water

Cold water on your face will jolt your vagus nerve and slow your heart rate. Your brain feels your heart rate dropping and says, "We must not be stressed anymore." (Ha! Stupid brain)

From The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time:

Sudden cold water on your face slows down your heart rate by indirectly stimulating the vagus nerve. If you're feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or anxious, find a sink, fill your hands with cold water, and splash it on your face. [The Upward Spiral]

(To learn the methods bomb disposal experts use to stay calm under pressure, click here.)

Alright, maybe you've made funny faces, you're breathing like Darth Vader and your face is soaking wet but you're still stressed. Do not worry. (Or I should say, "Do not worry even more.") Neuroscience has another sneaky trick. And this one is fun.

4. Play music and do a little dance

Music affects how you feel, right? Fight the bad feelings with good feelings by listening to the music you love.

Sound overly simple? Nope. Your favorite song will passively help straighten out key limbic system regions like your hippocampus, your anterior cingulate, and your nucleus accumbens. Making music has an even more powerful effect.

And, no, you don't have to do a little dance. But you get bonus points if you do.

From The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time:

Whether playing an instrument or listening to the radio, music increases heart-rate variability, though making music has a stronger effect. Music engages most of the limbic system, including the hippocampus, anterior cingulate, and nucleus accumbens, which is why it can be motivating and enjoyable and can help regulate your emotions. It can also be soothing, lowering blood pressure and reducing stress. So sing along with the radio or just make a playlist of your favorite songs. Better yet, go dancing. Dancing combines music, exercise, and being social, so you get a triple boost to an upward spiral. [The Upward Spiral]

(To learn what ancient wisdom says will make you happy, click here.)

Alright, you've fooled your brain into a state of calm that would make Zen masters envious. Let's round up what we learned and do something fun together that will relieve stress and make you smile instantly

Sum up

Here's how neuroscience and treachery can make you stress-free:

So how can you kill stress and be happier with almost no effort whatsoever?

Research shows that owning a dog reduces stress. In fact, the effect is so powerful that just watching a video of a cute animal reduces heart rate and blood pressure in under a minute.

From 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute:

In an innovative study, Deborah Wells examined whether merely looking at a video of an animal can have the same type of calming and restorative effects as those created by being in its company Compared to the two control conditions, all three animal videos made the participants feel much more relaxed. To help reduce your heart rate and blood pressure in less than a minute, go online and watch a video of a cute animal. [59 Seconds]

You want easy stress relief? All you have to do is click

(Awwwww, that's so sweet I think I'm getting cavities.)

Join 250K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.

See the article here:
Neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you stress-free - The Week Magazine

Browse > Home / Blog / Dr. Computer is transforming neuroscience research

Posted on Thursday, March 23, 2017

Using thousands of images from brain scans such as MRI, computers can learn to detect signs of neurological disease, opening up new possibilities in research and diagnosis.

By Shawn Hayward

In an article published in Nature on Feb. 15, researchers, including principal investigators from the Montreal Neurological Institutes McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (BIC), used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to predict the development of autism in babies.

It was not a neurologist or medical doctor doing the predicting, however, but a computer trained to distinguish the brains of children at risk of autism. This was an application of deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence that will increasingly put computers in the drivers seat of medical diagnosis and neuroscience research.

Developed from the concept of artificial neural networks in the 1960s, in the footsteps of the pioneering work of Donald Hebb, a former McGill psychology professor, deep learning has experienced a kind of renaissance in recent years, thanks to the increasing availability of powerful computational resources and access to vast amounts of digital data.

Deep learning involves training computers to make complex calculations after analyzing enough data to learn or detect certain patterns of interest. They do this via relatively simple algorithms that mimic the brains basic mechanisms for processing information.

If you are on Facebook, you probably have already experienced AI in action. Facebook can detect where faces are in images and will ask you if you want to tag that person. The program that makes this possible is called DeepFace, a deep learning application Facebook developed by training computers to recognize faces using four million photos manually tagged and uploaded by users.

Deep learning techniques are being used in many aspects of biomedical research. One objective is to develop computer-assisted techniques to improve diagnosis and prevention, by analyzing data of various kinds to see problems before they occur. Deep learning is particularly important to neuroscience, where data types are extremely diverse. Artificial intelligence is a promising tool to help neuroscientists discover new basic principles within the vast amount of data available.

The Nature article is just an example of how deep learning and other AI techniques are rapidly becoming important to medicine and medical research, among other fields affecting our daily lives.

Several labs at the Montreal Neurological Institute are already using deep learning and related AI techniques to conduct research, and the BIC is training the next generation of neuroscientists and brain imagers to use these new methods. In January of 2017, the BIC sponsored two hands-on educational sessions focusing on deep-learning for neuroimaging. The event was attended by 80 of the centres students and staff scientists.

AI techniques are changing the game of how we do science. We want our research staff and trainees to be aware of and well prepared for this revolution, says Sylvain Baillet, a McGill professor and Director of the BIC. We are fortunate that Montreal is emerging as an international hub for AI research and industry. To remain leaders in our field, we must embrace AI methods like deep learning together with building and using large neurodata repositories, and invest both human and technical resources to exploit the unique features of these powerful tools.

Category: Blog

Tag: autism, brain imaging, deep learning, neuroimaging, neuroscience

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Dr. Computer is transforming neuroscience research - McGill Reporter

About 30% of what is eaten is used to fuel the brain, so healthy eating is good. "People make food choices because they are on a diet or training for sport, but no one not even someone who is paid to use his or her brain wakes up and thinks, What should I eat so I can make better decisions or think flexibly to solve complex problems?"

The first rule is to eat regularly. Meals should not be skipped because brains cannot store nutrients and will slip into low-power mode. Recommended foods are salmon, avocado, eggs, nuts, olives and coconut oil.

Another hot topic is technologys effect on the brain. Having calm time before bed is common sense, but the scientific reason makes it more compelling. "The blue light emitted from smartphones, tablets or laptops sends a message to your pineal gland that it is still daytime and it should not release the hormone melatonin that helps you fall asleep. So stop looking at those screens an hour before you want to fall asleep," Swart says.

Another topic she will deal with is "imposter syndrome", in which high-powered and successful people feel like frauds. When Swart began covering this in her talks, people would come up afterwards and confess that was how they felt.

"Successful people such as hedge-fund billionaires say they feel like they should not be in that position and they are afraid one day they will be found out as people realise they should not have risen this far," she says. "It has nothing to do with skills. They are skilled and no one else is thinking they cannot do their job. It is the creeping thought at the back of their mind that one day they will be found out," Swart says. The answer is to learn positive ways of overwriting those pathways in the brain and increasing peoples resilience and confidence by focusing on past successes.

That relates to her favourite topic of neuroplasticity the brains ability to rewire and build new pathways to relearn something or acquire new skills. Many people claim they are too old to learn new tricks or change their ways, but science has shown that is not true.

Neuroscience can also help people make better decisions before taking financial risks. Stress hormones and testosterone change when attempting something risky. Boosting testosterone brings extra confidence. A combination of certain foods and weight-bearing exercise can also achieve that. "Do some weights and eat cabbage afterwards, because there is a chemical compound in cabbage that has an effect on your testosterone levels," Swart advises.

Stress people feel at work affects their mood, decision-making abilities and capacity to bounce back from adversity.

Because leaders skills are affected by their mental state, Swart believes changes must be driven by companies, not individuals. It is happening slowly. Office gyms are being supplemented by yoga or meditation rooms, canteens are serving brain food and water coolers are being installed so people can remain hydrated.

Swart has been visiting SA for almost 20 years, first as a medical student working with HIV-positive babies, then as a doctor and now as a neuroscience coach.

The companies she consults for are mostly in the financial services and legal sectors.

She finds South Africans need this advice more than most, because the "boys dont cry" attitude is so engrained.

"The culture of organisations has to change. Having a culture of people doing exercise and eating healthily and being able to talk about stress is really important and it has to come from the leadership," she says.

Neuroscience for Leadership will run at the Turbine Hall, Newtown, Johannesburg, on May 25.

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Neuroscience firms up companies' efficiency - Business Day (registration)