Teaching Kids Neuro-Literacy through a Fun Story: Lisa Wimberger’s First Children’s Book is Out Now
When my daughter was little, I made a handwritten label for my can of Febreze that said, “Monster Go-Away Spray.” Anytime she felt unsafe or worried that there was a monster in her closet or under her bed, I’d spray a little bit here and there, and she immediately calmed down. While the solution worked […]
3 Brain-based Tips for Balance in a Time of Political Inflammation By: Lisa Wimberger
“My side’s right, your side is wrong.” “The state of our country’s health depends on this one moment!” “We can’t have THAT monster in office!” Sound familiar right now? These are the same thoughts we referenced four, eight, 12, 16, 20 years ago, and so on. We are in a time of political fear and […]
Oxytocin – The Dark Side of the Love Molecule
With the recent popularity of neuroscience for public consumption the neurotransmitter Oxytocin has gained the nick-name “The Love Molecule”. Who wouldn’t want more love, right? This neurotransmitter is know to be the bonding chemical released during sex, a mother and child nursing, and during heightened moments of trust. There are oxytocin nasal sprays marketed to […]
How Fear Hijacks the Mind
So many of us know what it feels like to be in the grip of fear, whether its financial, emotional, professional, or personal. You know intimately what your stomach feels like each time you have a bill you can’t pay. You are probably familiar with the pain in your chest when you think about that […]
Rewiring Fear While We Sleep
Fear is a relationship we create with events in our lives. The events are simply moments in time but the fear we cultivate drags those moments from the past into our current lives, causing a cascade of hormonal, emotional, and physiological stress changes in the body. But neuroplasticity gives us the ability to unlink the […]
Fear: One of the Strongest Brain Mapping Emotions
Fear is one of the strongest mapping emotions in the brain. We have approximately 100 billion neurons in the brain mapping to thoughts, behaviors, patterns, and physiology. About five times more of those neurons are allocated to threat detection or fear than to seeing things on the bright side. The more we fear something, the […]
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. The amygdalae’s job is to signal our stress response so that we have valuable stress hormones actively recruiting blood to the large muscle […]
A Fear-Orientation is Killing You!
In our modern world of green-house fears, war atrocities, environmental pillaging, and global threats the social media is rife with stories of conspiracy, fear, and apocalyptic preparedness. What is this focus doing to us? While it’s not advisable to put our heads in the sand and ignore the direction of current events, we can effect […]
How Close is that Looming Spider…Really?
The things we fear tend to appear larger, closer, and perhaps more ready to pounce than they really are. A recent study published in Current Biology notes that in controlled studies individuals rated fearful images as closer than they actually were. You know how quickly you are to react and snap to judgements when you […]
Getting Rid of Unwanted Memories
There is likely an ethical debate that could ensue around the art of removing or rewriting unwanted memories. Perhaps words like denial or delusion come to mind. But let’s pretend for a moment that neither of these things is an issue. IF our memories keep us locked in negative patterns, AND we know that each […]
