As we know our brains and emotions are intimately linked in a dance facilitated by hormones, neurotransmitters, and a myriad other stimuli. So it stands to reason that if women experience a radical hormonal flux each month, that their brains…
We spend lots of time learning how to navigate people, things, situations, environments and any other external influence we can think of. But it is the inner navigation, called interoception, that can be pivotal in our ability to heal and…
Loneliness and social isolation can be a major contributor to some common neuro-degenerative diseases like alzheimers. A new study led by Carnegie Mellon University's J. David Creswell offers the first evidence that mindfulness meditation reduces loneliness in older adults. If meditation…
Your thoughts and perception create the environment of the brain and vice versa. It’s the chicken and egg conundrum–is the thought the signal for the strss response, or is the brain chemistry the signal for the thought? No matter which…
Neurosculpting Note of the Day: Are you in unconscious blindness? David Eagleman, Neuroscientist, notes in "Incognito" that "to see something you must attend to it." Here's a neat experiment I do with my law enforcement workshops. I show a video…
Change. Change, whether positive or negative, often brings up levels of uncertainty which wire into our brains to trigger a threat response. But we can rewire that response and navigate our changing world differently. By noticing each small accomplishment or…
In studies done in fMRI machines on the brain's of individuals looking at art that they labeled either "beautiful, ugly, or disgusting" one area of the brain consistently got active while observing beauty: the medial orbitofrontal cortex (in the front…
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…
Which brain are you ruled by? Is your life defined by survival struggle and emotionally difficult relationships -- those attributes map to your limbic brain. Does your intellect get in the way of your joy so that you can't experience…
It's written all over your face! In 2001 neurologist Patrik Vuilleumeir found that a person's amygdala responds in threat mode to the appearance of fearful expressions of others EVEN IF that person is paying attention to something else. So even…
