Here are our notes from Dr Amen’s lectures:

Pre-frontal cortex – makes up 30% of the human brain

• Executive function
• Focus, forethought, judgement, empathy, learning from mistakes
• Problems:
  • Impulse control problems
  • Not much empathy
  • Short attention span
  • Procrastinate
  • Don’t learn from mistakes
• Low activity shows up in:
  • Smoking
  • Internet gambling
  • ADD (looking for stimulation)
  • Weak conscience
  • Low persistence
  • Low energy, depression
• Suggestions for helping:
  • Write out goals – emotional, health, relationships, work, money, physical
  • Exercise – intense aerobic exercise
  • Diet – high protein, low carb diet
  • Fish oil – will increase energy and concentration
  • Need to boost dopamine levels – green tea, L-tyrosine, Rhodiola

Cingulate Gyrus

• Brain gear shifter, go from idea to idea – flexible
• See options, helps you to cooperate
• Error detection
• Problems:
  • Works too hard
  • Deficit in serotonin
  • People get stuck on a worry or obsession, hold grudge, compulsions, addictions
  • Always fault-finding, micro-managers, rigid and inflexible, oppositional
  • Looks on the surface to be selfish and inflexible
• Suggestions for help:
  • Distract yourself – move when you see yourself stuck on a thought
  • Offer them options so they don’t feel trapped
  • Gratitude – 5 things I’m grateful for today
  • Diet – high carb, low protein
  • Boost serotonin with 5-HTP, L-tryptophan, St. John’s Wort, Saffron, a little Dark Chocolate
  • Exercise – aerobic + coordination, e.g., dance

Limbic System – deep in brain

• Emotional brain, mood
• Sets the emotional tone – positive or negative
• Bonding, connection
• Processes pain, smell, libido
• Problems:
  • If works too hard, feel sad, depressed, negative, hopeless, helpless
  • ANT – automatic negative thoughts – have to correct and remove ANTs
  • Tend to isolate themselves
  • Less interested in things that are fun, have a lot of pain
• Suggestions for help:
  • SAMe for depression and pain
  • Exercise 4 x per week at least
  • Fish oil – omega-3
  • Write it out – talk back to the distorted fact – is it true?

Prescriptions to make your Brain Great

Protect

• Head injuries can ruin your life
• Avoid toxic substances: alcohol, drugs, toxic fumes, medicines
• Sleep – more than 6 hours per night
• Brain diet – lean protein, complex carbs (green leafy vegetables), good fat (omega-3, fish, avocados, walnuts)
• Water
• Multivitamin/mineral supplement
• Fish oil supplement 1-2 grams/day (or flax seed oil for vegetarians)

Best food choices for the brain

1. Avocados
2. Bueberries
3. broccoli (folate)
4. green tea (theonine)
5. oatmeal
6. oranges
7. red bell peppers
8. salmon
9. spinach (B vitamins)
10. tuna
11. turkey
12. walnuts (omega -3)

Eat from the rainbow – increase amount of antioxidants by eating from every colour.

Work your Brain

• helps your brain make connections
• learn things that are new and different – 15 minutes / day – Lumosity.com, TEDx videos
• exercise – boosts blood flow, BDNF (grow new neurons), Serotonin – especially aerobic combined with coordination (e.g., dancing) – more than 2 times/week

Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease

• Risk factors – head injury, untreated ADD, depression, heart disease, genetics, drink too much alcohol, obesity, smoking, diabetes
• Need to get diagnosed early – Brain SPECT imaging can see 5 years before dementia starts to show – loss of smell identification (loss of strawberry, pineapple, lemon, natural gas)

The following enhance brain health:

• + social connections
• New learning
• Great diet
• Sleep
• Exercise
• Physical healthy
• Healthy anxiety (helps get things done)
• Meditation
• Gratitude
• ANT killing

At 25 (males 28) the brain finishes developing

Also suggest visiting Dr. Mercola’s interview with Dr. Amen at: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/10/28/psychiatry-needs-spect-imaging.aspx

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Yesterday, Helen and I came across this video on TED Talks and were enthralled not only with what Joe Dispenza was discussing, but with the fabulous images he shared of a neuron creating new connections. We hope that you find it as fascinating as we did. Included below are our notes made while watching the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCxo9GwbP_8&feature=relmfu

[Helen (www.insightfulnutrition.ca) and I watched this video last week, but today it has been removed from YouTube. There are several other videos available from Joe Dispenza, and we encourage you to learn from him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMN_Sd9qdIE]

1.Neo-Cortex – newest, most evolved part of brain; highly specialized

2.Limbic – also known as the mammalian brain – internal chemical brain which regulates internal chemical orders

3.Cerebellum – reptilian brain – seat of subconscious mind – oldest part of brain

• Each of these brains has their own anatomy and circuitry, own individual biocomputer, own physiology and chemistry, own history, own sense of time and space
• In the brain, neurons store and communicate information between and among each other
• Neo-cortex – seat of conscious awareness, loves to gather information
• Learning > new information leads directly to new connections – actual physical change to the brain
• New information is biologically wired into cerebral architecture
• Remembering > maintaining the connections – the more you communicate the more bonded you become – start to form neuro networks which are fired and wired together to create a neuro community
• Mind is the brain in action – experience enriches your brain neurologically (more connections); then it produces a chemical that is called a feeling or emotion; this chemical is released by the limbic brain; this allows you to remember this experience
• Routine lulls the brain to sleep – stress can cause you to make immediate connections (eg, memories of 9-11)
• Your body is your unconscious mind, it does not know the difference between the actual experience in reality that produces the emotion and the emotion that you fabricate by thought alone
• Limbic brain produces neurochemicals
• Stress response – when you can’t turn it off, you’re heading for disease
• Pay attention to how you are feeling – called metacognition > observe who we are being (like observing yourself from outside yourself)
• Metacognition allows us the ability to modify our behaviours and change how we react/do a better job
• Frontal lobe – seat of our awareness – home of the you and the me
• As you think of who you want to be, the frontal lobe acts like a volume control and begins to lower the volume on the circuits in the brain that are connected to the old self
• It begins to silence the old circuits – this allows you to observe and no longer participate
• Next step is to biologically break down the old connections so no longer biologically connected to the old self
• Changes to neural connections can be made with persistence and amplitude
• BDNF – growth factor – goes from the neuron back across the synaptic cleft – can actually steel from neighbouring, weaker connections
• Allows old memories to lose their strength – so you can actually prune away old memories / old self
• Can happen in moments!
• Knowledge > happens in the mind – Experience > happens in the body
• Limbic mind makes a new batch of chemicals – instructing the body chemically
• Repeated exposure to a new thought makes it become real – to point where you no longer have to think about it
• In the example, neurochemically conditioned the body to memorize compassion as well as the conscious mind
• Mind and body activate the cerebellum – the seat of the subconscious mind – so that compassion becomes a habit, then a state of being!

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