Sleep, The Brain and The Mind - Part 1 of 2

A healthy mind sustains a healthy brain.  A healthy brain sustains a healthy mind.  There is a symbiotic relationship between the two.  It is this very relationship that determines the quality of our lives in the present and into the future.

Over the next few posts I want to focus on how to maintain a healthy brain and a healthy mind.  I will dedicate each post to a specific topic where I will explore the science of maintaining the brain and the mind.  After I have explored each issue I will list a series of actions that you can employ to keep your headspace in tip-top shape.

Let me be straight with you right here, right now.  There is no light-switch solution.  What I mean by this is that you can’t simply flip the switch and everything is good.  Like any other improvement in life it requires an investment in time and effort.  If you follow the simple actions outlined in each post and stay dedicated, determined and disciplined you will start to see improvements in two to three weeks.

With that said let’s jump into the first post, which will be presented in two parts.  Let's take a look at Sleep, The Brain and The Mind.


SLEEP
We spend a good third of our lives sleeping.  So if you are fortunate to live to the decent age of 85 years old you will have spent 28.3 years sleeping.   This number may seem quite shocking, but trust me your brain needs your mind to be off line in order for it to do some must-needed house cleaning. 

The activity of sleeping is crucial to our health and well-being as much as nutrition, breathing and exercising.  The reason why we need sleep is still under investigation by various fields in science and the picture is not complete, yet.  What each of us does know is how much more energized we feel and how good our mood is after a solid nights sleep.  The question that still remains: what’s really happening in our brain and body when we are at rest?

Most people are under the assumption that when we fall asleep the brain quiets down.  As counter intuitive as it may seem the brain actually stays active when we sleep.  What quiets down is our mind - the conscious part of our brain.  The chemical signals and the electric firing between the  neurons in our brain are just as active in sleep as during the waking hours. 


SLEEP CYCLES
Sleep happens in cycles of approximately 90 minutes.  There is a general consensus among sleep experts that a good nights sleep ranges between 6 to 8 hours.  This means that on average we need between 4 to 5 sleep cycles of 90 minutes to feel invigorated and refreshed.

Within one sleep cycle our brains move through a range of depths of sleep, which are often referred to as sleep waves.  The waves frequencies and amplitude are measured by an instrument called an electroencephalogram (EEG).  As we sink deeper into a cycle of sleep the amplitude of these waves increases, while their frequency diminishes correspondingly.

There are typically four stages of sleep with their own individual wave frequency ranges.  These are measured by an EEG trace. So if your sleep cycle was being measured this is what would be picked up:

 Fig 1: EEG reading of the different sleep waves.
Courtesy of Sleepdex - Resources for Better Sleep

Fig 2: The stages of sleep waves with frequency and amplitude.
Courtesy of Sleepdex - Resources for Better Sleep


THE BENEFITS OF SLEEP

Cleaning the Brain
In 2013, a number of studies found that sleep gave the brain a chance to  wash out damaging molecules that built up during waking hours.  What was discovered is that the space between neurons (brain cells) increased when asleep aiding in the efficiency to clean out damaging molecules accumulated during waking hours.

The scientists at the University of Rochester found that these ‘toxic’ molecules were associated with speeding up neurodegenerative diseases - a wasting away of neurons indicative of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.  Sleep is crucial for literally cleaning and maintaining the brain.

Archiving Experiences & Consolidating Memory
Another major benefit of sleep is that it allows time for the brain to form new memories and to consolidate older memories with more recent ones.  

The hippocampus is the structure in the brain that is involved in memory creation by consolidating the events we have experienced and lessons we have learned.  Sleep also plays a very important role in learning, because it helps us to solidify new information through better recall, while reducing the likelihood of forgetting.

More specifically, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is key to consolidating procedural memory (how to use your iPhone or drive a car) and deep sleep (non-REM sleep) is key to consolidating explicit memory (remembering a phone number or address).  Sleep deprivation can significantly affect the hippocampus’ function to form memories.

Normally, the activating brain-chemicals (neurotransmitters) norepinephrine, epinephrine, and cortisol subside at night as we drift into a more relaxed mind state readying ourselves for sleep.  These brain chemicals are usually more present in awake and stressed states of mind.  The lack of sleep increases the level of these activating chemicals and has a direct affect on the proper functioning of the hippocampus.

Improving Performance
To expand on the previous point sleep is key to consolidating our procedural memory.  This is the type of memory related to motor tasks, like learning to ski, swinging a golf club or putting on your pants so they become automatic behaviours.

During REM sleep there are short bursts of brain waves at strong frequencies that are called sleep spindles.  During this period of sleep the the brain moves short-term memories stored in the motor cortex to the temporal lobe, where they are stored as long-term memories.  Simply put, sleep is essential to improving the performance of any physical skill.

Improving Innovative & Creative Thinking
When the conscious mind is offline and the unconscious brain can let loose the mental sparks can begin to fly.  When we are sleeping the unconscious brain can make some astounding new connections.  Watson and Crick, the discovers of the DNA helix, said the solution came to them in a dream state.  They dreamt of rolling a newspaper and a profound ‘a-ha’ moment exploded.  The shape of double-helix sprang forth that explained how DNA was structured. 

The sleep state can make new associations that may not be possible in a waking state.  In 2007, a study at the University of California at Berkeley found that sleep can help to make completely unassociated connections that can lead to awe-inspiring insights of innovation and creativity.  The study found people were 33 percent more likely to make connections between seemingly distantly related ideas.


THE CONSEQUENCES OF POOR SLEEP

• The lack of sleep can lead to an increased risk of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. In addition to this, the lack of sleep can mimic many of the signs of aging and the seriousness of many medical conditions, while causing changes to metabolism as well as to the endocrine system.  

• The lack of sleep also suppresses the immune system resulting in more body stiffness and aches. Stress increases the release of norepinephrine and epinephrine, and they also decrease the amount of slow-wave sleep.

• The lack of sleep can lead to weight gain even after only 6 to 7 days.  The reason for this is there is an increase in the production of ghrelin.  The hormone responsible for promoting appetite.  At the same time, there is a decline in the production of the leptin.  The hormone responsible for reducing appetite.  To throw more on top of this, your increased munchies due to the lack of sleep increases your need to consume food that is heavily loaded with calories.  This will also include foods that are sweet, starchy and made up of simple carbohydrates.  (I will spend an entire post looking at diet and nutrition as it relates to the brain).

• The lack of sleep lowers glucose tolerance, increases the activity of the reactive mindset (the fight/flight response) and increases activating brain-chemicals associated with stress (cortisol, norepinephrine, epinephrine)

Our next post is Sleep, The Brain and The Mind - Part 2 of 2

We encourage you to share your questions, opinions and comments.

Thanks again for taking the time to read our blog.
________
Interested in applying the findings of brain-science to your professional life?

Please visit us at www.MINDtalk.no

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The Science of Finding Happiness at Work

There has been a massive volume written about happiness and work.  Much of what has been written is excellent and has practical application.  Here is the challenge I see working with organisations, specifically the larger ones that number in the thousands of employees, changing a company culture can be tantamount to moving mountains with the speed of continental drift.  Now don’t get me wrong there are a few examples out there where change has literally been revolutionary, but these are few and far between.

So where does that leave the individual professional who is seeking greater happiness?  Well that leaves them turning to themselves.  To some degree happiness has its external triggers, but a majority of it lies in the internal work each person has to do.  

Let me elaborate…

A great majority of your happiness is going to be determined by how you invest your attention.  Not too long ago a survey was conducted by an accident prevention charity. About 80% of the respondents admitted to going through life on autopilot.  Actions like arriving at the end of a car journey with no memory of driving there, buying the same item twice without realising, and turning up at the office on a day off. 

So what?  Well, this means we are very much like preprogrammed machines nearly oblivious to most of our actions.  We are all creatures of habit, spending our days playing out ingrained behaviours and responses over which we exert no control. 

The upside of is automating routines is that we don’t have to constantly be conscious of how to breathe, how to the walk, how to eat or drink.  But like every coin there is the flip-side.  Treading the well-worn paths of habit, we easily get stuck in jobs, relationships or ways of thinking that make us miserable, in lives we'd never have consciously chosen.

System One & System Two

In Daniel Kahneman’s influential book, Thinking, Fast and Slow he describes two systems of thinking - system one and system two.  System One is fast thinking and is the home of unconscious attention and automatic processing.  This system is responsible for our ingrained responses and behaviours.  System Two is slow thinking and is the home of conscious attention and deliberate reasoning.  This system is engaged anytime we are called upon to learn something new or take on a new perspective.

Since the brain wants to constantly conserve energy, it tries it’s very best to quickly automate any new behaviour.  That is, to move it from system two to system one.  Learning anything novel whether it is a new physical skill or a new way of thinking requires vast amounts of energy (system two).  But once it has been learned system one takes over and runs with extraordinary efficiency requiring minimal energy costs.

Is There a Key to Happiness?

The key to happiness comes down to how you invest your attention.  What you attend to drives your behaviour and that in turn determines your happiness. The key to happiness by design is to notice what you pay attention to and then to organize your life in ways that actually make you happier without having to think to hard about it.

In the context to this blog entry happiness is made up of two-parts - pleasure and purpose. There is pleasure (or pain) and purpose (or pointlessness) in all that you do and feel. They are separate components that make up your overall happiness that comes from what you experience.  You are happiest when you manage to strike a balance between pleasure and purpose that works best for you.

Attention is the Glue

There are two elements here.  The first is attention, which is the glue that holds your life together.  The second is happiness, which is ultimately about the pleasure-purpose principle over time.   As time is the only truly scarce resource, we should all be seeking to use our time in ways that bring us the greatest overall pleasure and purpose for as long as possible.  Our life clock is more like a timer which counts down.  You cannot neither recover lost time nor lost happiness.  There are no resets and no rewinds. 

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for us to pay more attention to what we think should make us happy rather than focusing on what actually does. Too often we evaluate something as satisfactory even when the actual experience is not pleasurable, leading to poor choices about what really gives us happiness.

Happiness is something you can achieve by becoming more conscious of what actually contributes to it. More specifically day-to-day happiness is composed of pleasure and purpose.  This means you don't want to just feel good, you also want to feel that you are doing good. With this mindset, you can tolerate short term strife if you know that it is being suffered for a purpose. At the same time, pleasure must be included in the calculation as it is fundamental to feeling happiness.

From my experience working with a wide range of professionals, most of the time we are not even conscious of the ways we hinder our own happiness.  I think many of us think we are going to be happy from acquiring new toys but that usually wears off rather quickly.  Along with this we do not give enough credit to the happiness of experiences and in turn we don't value them as much. To our own detriment, we tend to focus on accumulation rather than participation.

London Cabbies and Hippos

Before someone can actually become a London cabby they must pass a difficult test that requires them to navigate 25000 streets.  Those that pass the test, which is only half of the test-takers, have larger hippocampi.  This is the part of the brain that is responsible for forming long term memories and spatial processing.  The growth of the hippocampi was a result of studying for the test and as they learned more and more. So paying attention can literally change your brain.

The brain is a highly complex and sophisticated processing system, with billions of neurons and trillions of synaptic connections, and you can learn to focus your attention on more meaningful stimuli that contributes to your sense of pleasure and your sense of purpose.   The first step is then to be aware of what brings you pleasure and purpose.  The second step is to keep your attention on these stimuli.  The reality is that most of us don’t do this.  

Situational Blindness

One of the fundamental mechanisms of attention is when you attend to one aspect of your environment you do not attend to another. This can lead to a mental phenomenon referred to as situational blindness, whereby you are so focused on one aspect of your surroundings that you fail to notice the bigger picture.  Follow this link to test your own situational blindness (http://bit.ly/1gXmThe).  It takes less then two-minutes.

One way of overriding situational blindness is to trigger your conscious attention.  This is when deliberately direct your focus on something.  The following exercise will help you to overcome situational blindness.

Moving Forward Exercise

If you want to be more happy then you need to make the conscious effort to identify what brings you a sense of pleasure and what gives you a sense of purpose.  It means you literally need to stop-up and think what aspects of my job meet these two criteria.  At first, it may seem like a difficult task.  Give it some time and be patient.  Your brain may not be use to thinking in this manner.  Let your brain warm up and settle in.  Believe me, after awhile your brain will start spitting out answers.

Here is a simple exercise I take clients through.  I ask them to scale their answers from 0 to 10.  0 meaning not-at-all.  10 meaning completely.

Step 1: On an average day, how satisfied are you with your work?

Step 2: On an average day, to what extent do you feel your job gives you a sense of purpose?

Step 3: What do you want to do in order to increase your answers in Step 1 and 2  by one value? (e.g. moving it from    

                     a value of 5 to 6)

If you want to increase the level of happiness in your professional life much of the ownership lies with you.  You want to take deliberate action to identify what functions and aspects of your job gives you a sense of pleasure and purpose.  This effort of consciously focusing your attention engages system two - slow thinking and conscious reasoning.

Similar to the brains of the cabby drivers that grew in response to learning to navigate the streets of London, your brain will grow to automatically search for the elements of pleasure and purpose in everything you do and experience.  This is the mental shift I mentioned earlier - from System 2 (conscious reasoning) to System 1 (automatic processing).

On average, it takes about 60 days to set the foundation for a new habit - mental or physical.  From my experience working with a broad spectrum of professionals, a definite shift in mindset and overall happiness begins to happen in those 60 days. It simply becomes so much easier for people to discover those factors that make life more meaningful.

Take Home Message (THM)

The first THM is to stay attentive to the aspects of your job that bring you a sense of purpose and that bring you a sense of pleasure.

The second THM is to be dedicated to the change, disciplined to stick with the change, and decisive to take the actions necessary to sustain the change.

Happiness is not simply some enigmatic state of mind.  Happiness is a result of our efforts to direct our attention, which in turn has concrete and tangible biological and chemical effects on our brains.

We encourage you to share your questions, opinions and comments. 

Thanks again for taking the time to read our blog.

________

Interested in applying brain-science in your professional life?

Please visit us at www.MINDtalk.no

Top 10 brain fitness and brain training myths, debunked:

Myth 1. Genes determine the fate of our brains.

Fact: Lifelong brain plasticity means that our lifestyles and behaviors play a significant role in how our brains (and therefore our minds) physically evolve.

Myth 2. We are what we eat.
Fact: We are what we do, think, and feel, more than what we eat.

Myth 3. Medication is the main hope for cognitive health and enhancement.
Fact: Non-invasive interventions can have comparable and more durable benefits, and are also free of side effects.

Myth 4. There’s nothing we can do to beat Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline.
Fact: While nothing has been shown to prevent the pathology of Alzheimer ’s disease,there is abundant research showing we can delay the onset of symptoms for years –a very meaningful outcome which is often overlooked.

Myth 5. There is only one “it” in “Use it or Lose it”.
Fact: The brain is composed of a number of neural circuits supporting a variety of cognitive, emotional, and executive functions. Using or exercising just one (like “memory”) is unlikely to be of much help.

Myth 6. Brain training can help reverse your brain age 10, 20, or 30 years.
Fact: “Brain age” is a fiction. Some brain functions tend to improve, and some decline, as we get older. And there is considerable variability across individuals, which only grows as people get older.

Myth 7. Brain training doesn’t work.
Fact: Brain training, when it meets certain conditions, has been shown to improve brain functions in ways that enhance real-world outcomes.

Myth 8. Brain training is primarily about videogames.
Fact: Real, evidence-based brain training includes some forms of meditation, cognitive therapy, cognitive training, and biofeedback. Interactive media such as videogames can make those interventions more engaging and scalable, but it is important to distinguish the means from the end, as obviously not all videogames are the same.

Myth 9. Heart health is brain health.
Fact: While heart health contributes significantly to brain health, and vice versa, the heart and the brain are each crucial organs with their own set of functions and preventive and therapeutic interventions. What we need now is for brain health to advance in a decade as much as cardiovascular health has advanced over the last several decades. 

Myth 10. As long as my brain is working fine, why should I even pay attention to it?
Fact: For the same reasons you should add gas to your car and change the oil regularly – so that it works better and performs longer.

Contribution by Sharp Brains

Exercise & The Brain

Exercise & the Brain

Studies find exercise increases stress resilience, fights anxiety, speeds up the mind, protects against dementia, is more fun than we predict, and more…

If everyone got a little exercise, we could put half the doctors in the world out of a job.

But it’s not just doctors who’d be out of a job if people could take the stairs every now and then, it’s also psychologists.

 

Here are 20 wonderful psychological effects that exercise has on the mind.

1. Increases stress resilience

Studies on mice have shown that exercise reorganises the brain so that it is more resistant to stress (Schoenfeld et al., 2013).

It does this by stopping the neurons firing in the regions of the brain thought to be important in the stress response (the ventral hippocampus).

This may be part of the reason that exercise…

2. Reduces anxiety

Exercise has a relatively long-lasting protective effect against anxiety (Smith, 2013).

Both low and medium intensity exercise has been shown to reduce anxiety. However, those doing high intensity exercise are likely to experience the greatest reduction in anxiety, especially among women (Cox et al., 2004).

 

3. Lower dementia risk

Almost any type of exercise that gets your heart working reduces the risk of dementia.

A review of 130 different studies found that exercise helped prevent dementia and mild cognitive impairment among participants (Ahlskog et al., 2011). Regular exercise in midlife was associated with lower levels of cognitive problems.

Not only this, but participants who exercised had better spatial memory.

4. Escape a bad mood

If you want to raise your energy levels, reduce tension and boost mood, you can talk to your friends or listen to some music.

But most agree that for the difficult job of transforming a bad mood into a good one, exercise is the most effective method (Thayer et al., 1994).

5. Cut down on cocaine

Or perhaps you’re getting a little too happy?

By all accounts, cocaine is a bit more-ish. At least when you put it into the water of experimental rats, they suddenly develop quite a thirst.

Exercising rats, though, while still enjoying a little taste of Columbia, tend to self-administer less cocaine (Lynch et al., 2010). This suggests exercise may help humans regulate their cocaine intake.

6. Fight depression

Just as exercise fights anxiety, it also fights its close relation, depression.

One review of 39 different studies involving 2,326 people has found that exercise generally provides moderate relief from depression (Cooney et al., 2013).

It won’t cure, but it can certainly help. The effects may be as great as starting therapy or taking anti-depressants.

7. Speed up your mind

Working memory includes what’s in your conscious mind right now and whatever you’re doing with this information.

After 30 minutes exercise, people’s working memory improves. There’s some evidence that accuracy drops a bit, but this is more than made up for by increases in speed (McMorris et al., 2011).

8. Consolidate long-term memory

The effects of exercise on long-term memory are somewhat controversial.

However, at low-intensity, one recent study has found that exercise can benefit long-term memory (Schmidt-Kassow et al., 2013; see: Exercise Can Improve Long-Term Memory).

9. Boost self-control

A review of 24 different studies on the effects of exercise on self-control, found that a short bout provides an immediate boost to self-control (Verburgh et al., 2013).

Although regular exercise didn’t show an effect on self-control, a period of moderate exercise did allow people to take better control of themselves.

10. Help with serious mental disorders

Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder often involving hallucinations, paranoia and confused thinking.

Despite its grave nature, there’s evidence that exercise can help for this, as well as alcoholism and body image disorder (Tkachuk et al., 1999).

11. Reduce silent strokes

A silent stroke is one that seems to have no outward symptoms, but does actually damage the brain.

Without knowing why, sufferers can start experiencing more falls, memory problems and difficulties moving.

Exercise, though, reduces the chance of these silent strokes by 40%.

It has to be more than just walking or playing golf, though; things like jogging, biking, playing tennis or swimming are probably required to get the protective effect (Willey et al., 2011).

12. Alzheimer’s protection

In the most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s, the brain literally wastes away; closely followed by the body.

Neurons and synapses are lost and the sufferer’s memory, personality and whole being slowly but surely disappear.

Exercise, though, provides a protective effect against Alzheimer’s by helping to produce chemicals which fight the damaging inflammation of the brain (Funk et al., 2011).

13. Improve children’s school performance

Children who are fitter and engage in more exercise do better at school (Tomporowski et al., 2011).

Incredibly, one study has found that the increased mental abilities of children who exercise makes them safer crossing the road when distracted by their mobile phones (Chaddock et al., 2012).

There’s a reason to get kids to exercise if ever I heard one.

14. Stimulate brain cell growth

Part of the reason that exercise is beneficial in so many different mental areas is that it helps new brain cells to grow.

A study on rats has shown that, in response to exercise, the brain regions related to memory and learning grow (Bjørnebekk, 2007).

15. Increase executive functioning

What psychologists call ‘executive functioning’ includes all kinds of useful abilities like being able to switch tasks efficiently, ignore distractions, make plans, and so on.

Reviewing many studies in this area, Guiney and Machado (2012) find that exercise reliably improve executive function, especially in older adults.

16. Better sleep

The relationship between exercise and sleep is a little more complicated than most imagine. It’s not necessarily the case that exercise makes you tired, so you sleep better.

For example, one study on insomniacs found that 45 minutes on a treadmill did not make them sleep better that night (Baron et al., 2013).

However, the study found that exercise did help sleep in the long-term. Participants with insomnia who kept to their exercise programs over 16 weeks did get better sleep than those who did no exercise.

17. Prevent migraines

Migraine sufferers are often afraid of exercise because it might bring on an attack.

But a study has shown that exercise can actually help prevent migraines (Varkey et al., 2011).

Participants who took part in three sessions a week on an exercise bike for three months showed improvements equivalent to taking the latest anti-migraine drugs.

18. Stop smoking

Even something as simple as a short walk can help people give up smoking.

According to 12 different studies reviewed by Taylor et al., (2008), people who take a brisk walk, or similar exercise, experience less stress, less anxiety and fewer withdrawal symptoms when trying to give up.

The reason it helps is partly because it actually makes the cigarettes seem less attractive (Van Rebsburg et al., 2009).

19. Reduce motivation to eat

People tend to think that exercising makes you eat more to replace the lost calories, but new research questions this.

Recent studies have found that, after exercise, people show lower motivation to eat food (Hanlon et al., 2012).

Exercise may suppress appetite by decreasing the body’s levels of ghrelin, which is a hormone that stimulates appetite (Broom et al, 2008).

20. It’s more fun than we predict

The final effect exercise has on the mind is not so wonderful. It’s the effect that we tend to predict it’s going to be horrible.

But this is short-sighted. Research has shown that while exercising can be a drag at the start of the session, people soon warm up.

According to Ruby et al. (2011), people enjoy their workouts much more than they predict. This was true across lots of different types of people and for both moderate and challenging workouts (see: Why Exercise is More Fun Than We Predict).

So, give it a go, it really won’t be as bad as you think. You might even enjoy it.

From PsyBlog