How Damaging is that Fake Smile?

Selfies, photos, videos, magazines —  our lives are full of others’ facial expressions on a global scale. Science has used these facial expressions as a source of research in fields like lie detection and social cognitive neuroscience. Neuroscientists differentiate two types of smiles; a genuine smile called the Duchenne smile which is characterized by the tiny […]

You Are NOT a Victim

Autonomy and control wire into our brains directly into the reward center: the ventral striatum. When we perceive we don’t have control, we deactivate the reward center and activate the pain/stress pathway. In 2009 the Journal of Psychosomatic Research published this finding: helplessness accounted for a 5-times greater risk of hypertension than any other life factor, […]

What a Difference a Verb can Make!

I AM vs I FEEL Did you know that when the fight-or-flight center of the brain is engaged (the limbic system) saying things like I AM so angry keeps the blood flowing in that direction, feeding that center.   But when you switch to I FEEL so angry there is a measurable shift in blood flow […]

A Smile a Day can Enhance the Month of Romance!

The month of February is the month of romance.  For some of us that adds extra pressure, and paradoxically can even cause depression.  With a little self-nurture we can begin to shift this disposition.  The muscles of the face, unlike most other body muscles, communicate with the brain stem rather than the spinal cord.  This […]

How the Brain Creates Beauty: this is NOT about Renee Zellweger’s Face

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, yet so many of us are concerned about social standards of beauty and body image. If it’s truly in the beholder’s eye, then perhaps we should remind ourselves that we behold our own image each time we look in the mirror. What if my beauty […]

Rewriting the Brain’s Stories

Our ability to learn is one of the great brain functions that keeps us young.  Learning can be considered moments when one pays focused attention to an experience and then encodes that experience as a memory which can then be retrieved at another time.  Each of our memories is then a story line regarding a […]

Connecting to Others Just might Require some Self-Reflection

How can you connect to others if you can’t connect to yourself? When we are in reaction or in our limbic response, otherwise known as fight-or-flight, we have disabled the medial prefrontal cortex–this is the area that allows us to feel empathy, consider other people’s internal thoughts, states and motivations.  If we want to connect […]

We ARE Magicians

What if you had superhero powers to sculpt reality as you wanted it to be? What if science began to admit such powers?   When scientists discovered our gifts of neuroplasticity late in the last century we officially entered the age of the Magician.  According to Dr. Robert Scaer, author of 8 Keys to Brain-Body […]

Men & Women: A Move Towards Conscious Communication

According to Dr. Brizendine females have a larger prefrontal cortex, insula, and ACC – all areas that relate to empathy, sensing our own bodies, and considering other people’s mental states.  Men have larger amygdala’s – the area that deals with fight-or-flight, automatic response, survival needs and emotions. Knowing our strengths and predispositions can lead to […]

Heart vs. Head

Experiences create the “repeated neural firing that can lead to gene expression, protein production, and changes in the regulation and structural connections in the brain.” (Dr. Daniel Siegel, 2010)   BUT the brain is not just housed in the skull.  We have these neural networks that deliver complex input from other areas of the body […]