TEDx Talk: Hack Your Brain

In the past decades of continuous development, the world has become significantly more complex, presenting larger amounts of uncertainty. Accordingly, a new way of life has evolved, marked by increased pressure that burdens the performance of our brain and body. In spite of the difficulties presented, we continue to adapt to overcome these challenges. According to Karolien Notebaert, Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience, rather the opposite is true as she believes the significant extent of societal pressure is rather limiting our cognitive efficiency. In this TED talk, she presents mindful self-regulation as a pressure-relieving mechanism. Describing it as the capacity to manage ourselves and the internal blockages that limit our potential, Karolien explains how the latter can reduce stress in specific areas of the brain synergistically improving performances of other areas that excel our mean peak performance.

Transcript

Translator's note What many people do not know about me is that I left my home,

My parents' home,

When I was 16 years old.

I had just turned 16,

And that's the moment that I believed I was ready for the world.

I was ready to discover the world,

And of course I was very young and very naive,

But the day that I left,

My mother,

She came to me,

And she decided to give me her final piece of good advice.

And she said,

Caro,

I know you have a lot of potential.

However,

If you want to make it in life,

Make sure you use your potential so you can develop the best version of yourself.

Those words of advice did not mean much to me when I was 16,

But it's only about 10 years after that,

When I was working as a scientist in the field of neurosciences,

That the advice came back to my mind.

And that,

For me,

Was the start of a scientific and personal journey on which I focused on one particular question,

Namely,

How can you unlock the potential in your brain?

Or differently put,

How can you hack your brain,

Get your potential,

And develop the best version of yourself?

Now,

On this journey,

Not only have I come to crucial insights with respect to this topic,

But it also radically changed my life.

And it's those insights that I want to share with you today.

First of all,

Let's have a look at what performance and potential means.

The performance that we bring stands for the potential that we have minus the internal interferences.

What's the potential that we have?

These are your talents,

Your skills,

Your expertise,

What you can do well.

However,

In many situations,

We are dealing with internal interferences,

And we are blocked to use our potential.

Let me give you an example.

Let's say that we all in the room have a great potential to sing,

And when we are at home,

In the shower,

We give our best performance.

But then you're being asked here and now to come on stage,

Inexperiencedly,

Unexpectedly,

To sing a song for us.

What is going to happen?

Well,

It's very likely that your performance is going to drop.

Now,

Why is that?

Clearly,

You have the potential to sing,

But standing here on stage,

All of a sudden,

Created these internal interferences,

Such as nervousness,

Anxiety,

Perhaps even negative thoughts.

And these factors,

They started to act like internal interferences,

And they blocked you in your potential to sing.

To get an idea on how we can reduce those internal interferences so we can access our potential,

Let's have a look at how this works in the brain.

Most of the internal interferences that we experience are being caused by too much activation in one particular brain region,

Which is called the amygdala.

And the amygdala,

They are generally very important for our survival,

But if they are too active,

They cause our interferences and block us in our potential.

Now,

What do we need for our potential on the other side?

For our potential,

We need a totally different brain structure,

Which is called the prefrontal cortex.

As the name suggests,

It's a brain structure that is fully in the front of our brain,

And this part of the brain is significantly involved in all your executive functions.

And what are those?

Planning,

Organizing,

Processing information,

Thinking about solutions.

In fact,

All the tasks that you do throughout the normal day,

For these,

You need your prefrontal cortex.

Now,

The bad news is,

And you might have noticed that,

But the prefrontal cortex has a limited capacity.

It works a bit like a battery.

If the battery is fully charged,

We bring a mental peak performance,

But the more we use it and the emptier it gets,

The worse version we are of ourselves.

To give you an idea of how that amygdala and prefrontal cortex work throughout the normal day,

I'm going to tell you a story.

It's a story about you,

A story about me,

About what we did yesterday and what happened during that day in our amygdala area and our prefrontal cortex area.

Now,

Keep in the back of your mind that we want to have the amygdala not too active,

And we want to have a prefrontal cortex that is fully charged.

So let's say you woke up yesterday and you hadn't slept enough.

And when we don't sleep enough,

Our prefrontal cortex is not fully charged.

You have two children,

Two girls,

And the youngest girl,

She's two years old,

And even though it's not very warm outside,

She absolutely insists on wearing shorts,

A t-shirt,

And sandals.

And your daughter,

She's just like you,

She's very stubborn,

And she's not giving in.

So what do you do?

You use your prefrontal cortex to negotiate with your child half an hour later,

She's wearing trousers.

You're in the car,

You're stuck in traffic,

Where you also need your prefrontal cortex,

And what happens after that is your day.

And I can summarize your day as follows.

We use our prefrontal cortex like crazy.

And after an extremely busy day,

We come home,

And this is our mental state.

Our mental battery is empty,

And our amygdala are having free play.

And let me tell you a secret,

This is also happening with the other members of the family.

Because your children,

They also have this mental battery,

But it's very tiny and super quickly empty.

So what do children do with an empty battery?

At least mine,

They do,

They start fighting,

You try to calm the children,

You try to make the food,

The food burns,

It is absolutely the worst case scenario,

And it's a moment that you think things can't get worse.

That's the moment that you bare feet step onto a Lego brick.

Laughter Have you already stepped onto a Lego brick?

It hurts,

Right?

And after a day like that,

It hurts even more because of the mental state we're in.

We have too much amygdala activation,

And our mental battery is empty.

And this at a moment where we are expected to have the best moments of our lives,

That's our mental state.

So I say we can do better.

As a scientist,

I was looking for a strategy with which we can down-regulate the amygdala activation and give a boost to our prefrontal cortex,

Because that's what it needs for a peak performance.

And I found that strategy.

It is a strategy that when you regularly practice it,

The amygdala activation will go down,

And your prefrontal cortex will get a boost.

Not only that,

It even gets better.

If you regularly practice this strategy,

The amygdala will eventually become smaller.

This means that the largest source of your internal interferences will become smaller.

And as a consequence,

Science has shown that this strategy leads to a very,

Very long list of positive effects,

Such as a better creativity,

A better cognitive and also physical performance,

A better focus,

Better decision-making,

Better well-being,

Also better health.

What's the strategy I'm talking about here?

I'm talking here about mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness meditation,

M and M.

You know the M&Ms you eat,

The sweets?

M&M,

The next time you eat them,

You think about mindfulness meditation.

As a skeptical scientist,

The first time that I read that word meditation,

I still remember that very clearly.

I put the article aside because I thought that meditation had something to do with putting candles in your ears or sniffing lavender or saying,

Ohm,

But I can assure you that mindfulness meditation is nothing esoteric.

Mindfulness meditation is a hard-core,

Scientifically under-built strategy with which you can unlock the full potential in your brain.

If you want to experience those positive effects of mindfulness,

It is very important that you practice mindfulness in the correct way.

And how do we practice mindfulness meditation in the correct way?

Well,

Let me start by telling you that you all have a monkey in your brain.

You might have noticed there is this constant voice that is constantly chatting to you,

Chat,

Chat,

Chat,

Chat,

Chat.

It's telling you what to do,

You know,

Check your phone,

Check your Facebook page.

It's also telling you how to feel,

To feel good,

To feel bad.

And it's constantly giving you its opinion.

Now,

This monkey in your voice,

In science we don't call this a monkey,

We have another name for it,

But in neuroscience we call this voice in our head the default mode network.

It's a bit like a computer has its default settings.

We also have that as a human being.

With us it's called the default mode network.

And this default mode network is a very dominantly activated network that constantly produces our thoughts.

It's the monkey chatting,

And it's those thoughts that eventually lead to our amygdala activation.

For mindfulness meditation,

We need a totally different brain network.

We need a brain network that is called the direct experience network.

And now why is this so important?

The power of mindfulness lies in the fact that these two networks cannot be activated simultaneously.

This implies that when I activate the direct experience network,

You will deactivate the default mode network.

Or,

Differently put,

You will shut up the monkey in your mind.

Now,

How do you do that?

Well,

The direct experience network is a network that is in very close connection to all of our senses.

Hearing,

Seeing,

Smelling,

Tasting.

And when we bring our full attention to one of our senses,

We activate the direct experience network,

And we deactivate the default mode network,

Or we shut up the monkey in our mind.

But when we do that,

What is going to happen is that the monkey really likes to chat.

So after a few milliseconds or a few seconds,

The monkey is going to start chatting again.

That's fine.

If that happens,

You bring your attention back to one of your senses.

Now that you understand why we might need mindfulness,

Let's also experience it.

I brought an exercise for you.

It's only 20 seconds,

And the only thing you have to lose is a bit of amygdala activation,

Which is a good thing.

So we're going to do it all together,

And how does the exercise look like?

When I say start,

We're all going to tap with both our hands on our knees until I say stop.

And when I say stop,

You're going to lay your hands flat on your legs,

And you're going to close your eyes and bring your full attention to the sensation that you experience on the skin of your hands.

And with this simple trick,

You will activate your direct experience network.

Are you ready?

Okay,

We all tap our knees and stop.

Now you close your eyes and feel your hands.

Okay,

You can open your eyes again.

For those who have never practiced mindfulness meditation before,

Well,

Congratulations.

This was your first mini mindfulness meditation session.

If you really want to have those effects,

It's important to practice,

Practice,

Practice.

Start by doing these five minutes per day in this week.

Increase it to 10 minutes next week.

And if you reach an average of 10 to 15 minutes a day,

It's a brilliant start.

And you don't always have to feel your hands.

You can feel something else in your body.

You can mind your breathing,

And this is something you can do anywhere.

During a meeting where you have no active participation,

Do a mindfulness meditation session,

Or in your class,

Rather than playing with your phone.

Coming back now to the advice that my mother gave me 20 years ago,

Namely,

Unlock the potential in your brain,

Develop the best version of yourself,

I have come to learn that mindfulness meditation is the key to high performance.

It's the way to hack your brain.

And this is something that we can do for ourselves,

To become the best version of ourselves.

But think bigger.

This is something we can do as a family,

Or as a team,

Or as a company.

As a company,

We are seldom the best versions of ourselves.

Or even think beyond that,

The moonshot thinking.

With mindfulness meditation,

We can create a better version of humankind,

Which lies in our hands.

And this,

I think,

Was an idea worth sharing with you today.

Thank you.

Reviews

I've been 'practicing' mindfulness for 7 or 8 years now. This

This was eye opening and so marvellous, thank you 🙏🏼🤍💫

Wow what a fabulous talk. I have never heard such a clear science based discussion of the workings of the brain. Loved the little mindfulness exercise too. Thank you so much

That is amazing 👏 and I will share it with my offspring too. Thank you Dr.

Pimp! Pimp is my word for awesome. And yes, I do know what it feel like to step on a Lego! I believe the Buddhist meditation for mindfulness is Vipassana Meditation.
With love & light.
Kirk ♍️

That was amazing! Thank you for sharing this information with us.

Fascinating. A reminder of what our human brains are capable of.

Very interesting I wonder what would happen if you learnt Reiki?

Great, simple example of mindfulness meditation. Whenever I eat an M&M, I will think of it.

Great talk. I agree . I do practice mindfull meditation and it has made all the difference in my life thanks

Great mini talk about mindfulness meditation and calming the monkey mind 🤍🙏

Excellent explanations for why we are the way we are, and I love the tapping your knees technique. Thank you.

appreciate how the speaker describes the different brain functions and how mindfulness impacts our brains.

Brilliant! So interesting and helpful. I shall refer my clients and students to you! ⭐✨🙏🌸💗
By the way
Nothing wrong with Esoteric practices 😁

Fantastic! This is why I feel so much different when I don’t get in my morning meditation. It’s clearly so important to fire up one’s direct experience network. Thank you!

Thank you for this insight. I already knew mindfulness was a good idea to quiet down the mind, but now I know WHY. So I’ll be doing it more often throughout the day as I’m looking for ways to heal my persistent CPTSD.

Thank you for this talk. So very true and powerful and I've never thought about it before.

Wonderful, actionable and succinct information! Thank you

Thank you for sharing your ideas about Mindfulness Meditation and how practicing it affects our potential!

Intuitively i knew mindfulness meditation was good for me: now there is scientific proof! 🙌🏻