Boost Your Curiosity and Your Pleasure by: Michelle Lee Weldon LPC, E~RYT, CNSF
If the fountain of youth is an elixir, curiosity just might be one of its active ingredients. What do you feel when you think of curiosity? I notice the idea of curiosity sparks images in my mind of wide-eyed wonder. I start to feel sensations of delight, and a little adrenaline… a kind of “leaning […]
Is Your Head full of Plastic?
In the last few decades the concept of neuroplasticity has taken hold of the science community. We agree now that our brains are malleable, waxing and waning in their structure and function, and ever changeable. NOW we know it’s even more plastic than that! Not only can we birth new brain cells, and strengthen […]
You are in Control of Your Stories
Our prefrontal cortex regulates attention and thoughts with vast amounts of neural connections and a system of arousal and neurotransmitters. If we take no action, our default system can favor excessive stress response and disease. Science proved that focused attention and a perceived sense of control manipulates these connections and overrides stress and disease. Each […]
The Thrill of Almost Winning
In a recent paper in “Neuropsychopharmacology” by neuroscientists at Oxford and Cambridge, their research noted that “almost wins” in gambling marked the same dopamine spike in the midbrain as actual wins. This may explain the addictive effect of vegas even for people who often lose. If an “almost win” can spike dopamine like that in […]
Feeling Good Creates Lasting Memories
What if you could squeeze all the richness and vitality out of your experiences and program that into your memories so that each time you remembered it you accessed vivid and alive detail? What would you choose to hold onto? What would you then pay attention to? It has been proposed that stimulating dopamine, […]
How to be Less Impulsive and More Big Picture
Recent research published in this summer’s Journal of Neuroscience noted that increasing levels of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex curbed one’s tendencies towards impulsivity and supported a more “larger, later” mentality. So how does one do this? During moments of focused attention, learning something new, experiencing a novel stimulation, or completing a task from your […]
Pay Attention to Your Life, Your Memory Depends on It
The mystics say to “be present”, and now science gives us a good reason why. The basics of neuroplasticity explain that focused attention combined with experience enable us to create neural maps. This means when we pay attention to the experience we’re having we encode that experience much more strongly, making it an accessible memory […]
Who’s Writing YOUR Stories?
Wake up! Our prefrontal cortex regulates attention and thoughts with vast amounts of neural connections and a system of arousal and neurotransmitters. If we take no action, our default system can favor excessive stress response and disease. Science is indicating that focused attention and a perceived sense of control manipulates these connections and overrides stress […]
You in Control of Your Stories
Our prefrontal cortex regulates attention and thoughts with vast amounts of neural connections and a system of arousal and neurotransmitters. If we take no action, our default system may favor excessive stress response and disease. Science proved that focused attention and a perceived sense of control manipulates these connections and overrides stress and disease. Each […]
A Little Novelty and Humor Goes a Long Way
In order for our brains to learn, encode, and stamp experiences into lasting memories, we must engage in a delicate balance or dance between chemical and neurological activity. One sensitive coupling is the relationship between dopamine and norepinephrine in the prefrontal cortex. When these two neurotransmitters are at their perfect levels with respect to each […]
