Healthy brain happy life

 Did you realize when you came here today that you were going to get a master's class in neuroscience? 

Uh, well, that's what's going to happen. Because, day, I'm going to tell you a story about when I added something to my life. When I added something that took precious time away from all the other things I was doing, it actually gave me more time, more energy, and more productivity. And that thing that I added was aerobic exercise. I'm going to tell you how that worked in my life, my own personal story, and I'm also going to tell you about the neuroscience underlying it. 

And in addition, I don't want to just tell you about it. I want to show you. I want to show you. And I have Ray Duck, and I am an amazing drummer here to help me. And so I'm going to ask you all to stand up, please. Okay. Go ahead, Ray. Okay, we need to move a little bit, right? Just do a few moves. Just shake it out a little bit. 4321. Let's go. Right, left, right, left. Push it out. Go. Push. Push it. 

Don't hit your neighbors. Just push it. Push it, push it. Right and left punches. Right, left, right, left. Four, three, two. Done. How do you feel? Okay. Have a seat. Fantastic. So I run an active neuroscience research lab, and I'm also a certified exercise instructor. And I move a lot. But I have to say that, uh, this wasn't always the case. My story starts in 1998 when I got hired as an enthusiastic young assistant professor at the Center for Neuroscience at New York University. I was so excited to have my very own research lab. And I was determined. I was focused on starting my own research lab and studying my favorite brain structure, the hippocampus.

 The hippocampus is important for long-term memory. What I wanted to do was figure out how the patterns of electrical activity in the hippocampus allowed us to form new long-term memories. I was relentlessly focused, um, on this goal. I worked all the time. Focused work, hiring people, getting experiments done. Even when I wasn't in a lab, I was thinking about the experiments that I wanted to do. Um, I had no other life besides the life in my lab. And I didn't care because I was doing exciting science just to give you a flavor for what it kind of felt like, what it was like to be in that time. 

So exciting scientifically. But I would literally go from my home to my lab, work really, really hard, go and get takeout. There's a lot of good takeout in New York and come back home. And I'd have this little rat-like maze, uh, activity. So it was great. And I got a lot of work done. That hard work paid off because, in six years, I was promoted to associate professor with tenure. That was great. But when I peeked my little head out of my lab door, I found I really didn't have a life.

 I didn't have a balanced life. My life in the lab was like this great party with lots of people to talk to, a party that you'd never want to leave. My social life was more like one of those deserted ghost towns in a Clint Eastwood western, um, with those tumbleweeds swirling around a dirt road. That was the social life completely unbalanced. I was always in my head, never in my body. And because of all that great takeout, I was 25 pounds overweight. So I knew something had to change. And I decided to tackle the weight thing first. Went to the gym, and hired a personal trainer. 

Best thing I've ever done, because I wanted to get every single penny out of that personal trainer. And I went, and she made sure I got stronger. Combined with cutting back on the takeout, I ended up losing 25 pounds and getting in the best shape of my life. So that was great. I got a great gym workout going. I was very, very regular. But then I discovered a workout at the gym that changed a lot. This workout is called intensity. And this is the kind of workout that I went to that as soon as it was done, I wanted to come back. 

It was so exciting. Love this workout and really upped my, um, um, just exercise regime to a higher level. So this intensity, what is it? It pairs physical movements with positive spoken affirmations. So we do things like, I, uh, am strong now, or I want it, I want it, I really, really want it done. Thank you. So that's what an intense Hodgy class feels like. And, um, I started feeling great. As we know, neuroscience research shows that increased exercise increases, um, dopamine in your brain, serotonin, and, um, endorphins. All these things make you feel great.

 But for me, the increase in the exercise plus those affirmations really started to, um, make me notice how improved my mood was. I got more confident. I started making friends at the gym. My social life started to revive. It was fantastic. But the most amazing thing that I noticed was that despite the fact that I was spending four to six extra hours at the gym, by this time, I noticed that I was even more productive, even happier, even more, um, energetic at work. In other words, when I added more exercise into my life, I got more time and productivity outside. 

Now, I particularly noticed this when I was writing. I'm a professor of neuroscience. I write a lot of grants. And what I noticed is that when I was going very regularly, four to 6 hours a week to the gym, my writing went particularly smoothly. In particular, my attention improved significantly, and my long-term memory again, I studied the hippocampus, and my long-term memory seemed to be significantly better. But when I only went to the gym once or twice a week, my mood definitely went down. And my writing was much less much more effortful. And, uh, it didn't strike me immediately. 

I have to say that it took a while for me to notice that trend. But once I noticed this, that is, the increased exercise was improving my mood and my long-term memory. This is something that makes a neuroscientist run to the literature to figure out what's going on. And when I got to the literature, I found that there was a great and interesting, um, group of data, um, on the effects of exercise on the brain that really originated from studies done in the 1960s by a neuroscientist named Marion Diamond. I know Marion Diamond well because she was my undergraduate advisor up the road at UC Berkeley.

 What Marion did is, ah, um, she asked how plastic, how malleable is the brain? She wanted to ask what would happen if you put a group of rats in an environment with lots of toys lots of other rats and lots of games to play. Basically, she wanted to raise rats in the Disney World environments. She compared their brains to other rats that were raised in impoverished environments with no toys and just a few other rats around. And what she found was, uh, the rats raised in Disney World, actually their outer covering of the brain, their cortex was significantly thicker. 

The cortex grew, and the brain grew. There were more blood vessels in those brains, and those brains had more positive neurotransmitters like acetylcholine, which is very important for learning and memory. So that was critical, a, uh, critical discovery. And, um, um, other scientists, after those studies done in the 1960s, said, well, what happens? Um, what was it about that Disney World of Environment, um, that made the brain change? What they found was the key aspect was all the exercise the rats were getting in Disney World. In fact, you can simply give a rat a running wheel and you get all of those brain changes.

 I don't know about you, but that makes me want to go out and get myself a running wheel, right? So since that time, um, we have focused on what exactly is exercise doing to particular brain structures? And it turns out that most work has been done on the effects of exercise on my favorite structure in the brain, the hippocampus. Exercise improves or enhances the hippocampus's anatomy, physiology, and function. In terms of anatomy, we know that exercise enhances what's called neurogenesis. Now, neurogenesis is the birth of brand-new neurons in the brain. Now, I have to step back for a second and say that for many, many years, um, we thought that you never got new neurons when you were an adult.

 All the brain cells that you got were with you when you were born, and you got no new ones, uh, later on. But we've recently found that there are actually two brain structures where new neurons are being born, even as adults and one of them is the hippocampus. So that means that all of us in the room have new brain cells being born in the hippocampus. So what exercise does it enhance? The number of new brain cells born in the hippocampus. It allows more of those brain cells to survive. And three, when those neurons survive, it lets them develop even faster. 

So, uh, those of us exercising, or the rats that exercise, have many more shiny new hippocampal neurons in there. The physiological responses of hippocampal cells in rats that exercise are significantly better than the physiological responses of rats that don't exercise. And here's the kicker. Rats that exercise perform significantly better on long-term memory tests than rats that don't exercise. So that's what made me want to ask, okay, now that we know that in rats, of course, let's see what happens in humans. What are the studies done in humans? Now, there are a good number of studies looking at the effects of exercise on human brains ah.

 And in humans. And most of them are what I call correlative. We can say that if you exercise more, you tend to have stronger brains and less dementia, especially when you get, um, um, older. Very few studies look at the causative aspects, the preventative, um, and the prescriptive aspects. How much how long? What kind of exercise do you have to do? Most of the work humans have done has been done in the elderly. What we can say is that increased exercise in the elderly does significantly improve frontal lobe function. That is, attention function. That's great.

 That's exactly what I was seeing. But none of the studies had been done on healthy young adults like me. So this is like a gold mine for a neuroscientist. These are amazing, important, unanswered questions that somebody just needed to have the desire to ask them. And so, because of this, I ended up shifting the entire focus of my research from basic hippocampal function to what is happening in our brains as we exercise. And my focus is going to be on healthy young adults. What are the effects of exercise? I want to focus on what happens to long-term memory functions, because there are almost no studies looking at the effects of memory function in exercise.

 And I also want to confirm that exercise, um, is, uh, improving attention function as well. But more than that, the focus of my new research program is going to be on those prescriptive aspects. How much exercise do you need? Most people ask, how little exercise do I need to get a better brain? Um, what kind of exercise is best? Um, is running as good as intensity, as I described? Is it as good as kickboxing? And how long does it last? So these are the exciting kinds of research directions that my lab is going in. In addition, I became certified as a fitness instructor to be able to participate directly.

 I also teach a free weekly exercise class at NYU that you're all invited to come to whenever you're in New York. And, um um, I have to say that if somebody had told me when I was a young assistant professor that Wendy you'd be teaching an exercise class and studying the effects of exercise on the brain, I would have laughed at them. Then again, I would have laughed if they had told me that. Wendy, if you spend six extra hours at the gym, you'll actually get more productivity, more time, and more happiness out of your life after. 

I would have laughed even harder. But it's true. So I want to end and leave you with three take-home messages today. The first take-home message is when you spend time at the gym. When you add exercise into your life, it will give you back more time, more energy, and more productivity. That's number one. Number two is. Why is that? We know about the neuroscience research going on, and we know a lot about the neurobiology of things going on. A lot of it is in rodents, and we are moving towards an understanding of that in humans. 

And the third is I want you to remember how exercise makes you feel. We did a little flavor of it, but I want to ask you to stand up again. And we're going to do an N with a little intensity to bring it all together. Ray. Okay. Same moves. We're just adding the affirmations 4321 Right left. Right left. I say I exercise to change my brain. You say it again. I exercise to change my brain. You say it. Push it out. Go. Push. Uh, I say I want it. I want it. I want a stronger brain.

You say I want it. I want it. I want a stronger brain. You say new move. Right, Left. Punch it out. Right left. Right left. I am Wonder Woman strong. You say it for the guys. I am Ah superman Strong. You. New move. Doubles. Right, Double. Left, Double. Nice. Right, Double. Left, Double. Here. I say watch me. You say, I say watch me now. Watch Me. You say? I say watch me now. And End. Good. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ray. Thank you for that wonderful music. I wish you an active body, a healthy brain, and a happy life.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

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Healthy brain happy life